ly you feel it, or the more earnestly you
wish to convey it, the farther do you find yourself removed to an
immeasurable distance from the possibility of making them enter into
views and feelings of which they have not even the first rudiments. You
cannot make them see with your eyes, and they must judge for themselves.

Intellectual is not like bodily strength. You have no hold of the
understanding of others but by their sympathy. Your knowing, in fact,
so much more about a subject does not give you a superiority, that is, a
power over them, but only renders it the more impossible for you to make
the least impression on them. Is it, then, an advantage to you? It may
be, as it relates to your own private satisfaction, but it places a
greater gulf between you and society. It throws stumbling-blocks in your
way at every turn. All that you take most pride and pleasure in is
lost upon the vulgar eye. What they are pleased with is a matter of
indifference or of distaste to you. In seeing a number of persons turn
over a portfolio of prints from different masters, what a trial it is to
the patience, how it jars the nerves to hear them fall into raptures at
some common-place flimsy thing, and pass over some divine expression
of countenance without notice, or with a remark that it is very
singular-looking? How useless it is in such cases to fret or argue,
or remonstrate? Is it not quite as well to be without all this
hypercritical, fastidious knowledge, and to be pleased or displeased as
it happens, or struck with the first fault or beauty that is pointed
out by others? I would be glad almost to change my acquaintance with
pictures, with books, and, certainly, what I know of mankind, for
anybody's ignorance of them!

It is recorded in the life of some worthy (whose name I forget) that he
was one of those 'who loved hospitality and respect': and I profess
to belong to the same classification of mankind. Civility is with me a
jewel. I like a little comfortable cheer, and careless, indolent chat,
I hate to be always wise, or aiming at wisdom. I have enough to do with
literary cabals, questions, critics, actors, essay-writing, without
taking them out with me for recreation, and into all companies. I wish
at these times to pass for a good-humoured fellow; and good-will is
all I ask in return to make good company. I do not desire to be
always posing myself or others with the questions of fate, free-will,
foreknowledge absolute, etc.