two.'--'Why, did they keep it up much then?' 'Oh! yes; and used to
sing catches and all sorts.'--'What, did Mr. Mounsey sing catches?' 'He
joined chorus, sir, and was as merry as the best of them. He was always
a pleasant gentleman!'--This Hume and Ayrton succumbed in the fight.
Ayrton was a dry Scotchman, Hume a good-natured, hearty Englishman. I
do not mean that the same character applies to all Scotchmen or to all
Englishmen. Hume was of the Pipe-Office (not unfitly appointed), and
in his cheerfuller cups would delight to speak of a widow and a
bowling-green, that ran in his head to the last. 'What is the good of
talking of those things now?' said the man of utility. 'I don't know,'
replied the other, quaffing another glass of sparkling ale, and with a
lambent fire playing in his eye and round his bald forehead--(he had a
head that Sir Joshua would have made something bland and genial of)--'I
don't know, but they were delightful to me at the time, and are still
pleasant to talk and think of.'--_Such a one,_ in Touchstone's phrase,
_is a natural philosopher;_ and in nine cases out of ten that sort of
philosophy is the best! I could enlarge this sketch, such as it is; but
to prose on to the end of the chapter might prove less profitable than
tedious.

I like very well to sit in a room where there are people talking on
subjects I know nothing of, if I am only allowed to sit silent and as
a spectator; but I do not much like to join in the conversation, except
with people and on subjects to my taste. Sympathy is necessary to
society. To look on, a variety of faces, humours, and opinions is
sufficient; to mix with others, agreement as well as variety is
indispensable. What makes good society? I answer, in one word, real
fellowship. Without a similitude of tastes, acquirements, and pursuits
(whatever may be the difference of tempers and characters) there can be
no intimacy or even casual intercourse worth the having. What makes
the most agreeable party? A number of people with a number of ideas in
common, 'yet so as with a difference'; that is, who can put one or
more subjects which they have all studied in the greatest variety of
entertaining or useful lights. Or, in other words, a succession of good
things said with good-humour, and addressed to the understandings of
those who hear them, make the most desirable conversation. Ladies,
lovers, beaux, wits, philosophers, the fashionable or the vulgar, are
the fittest company