598 LECTURES AND LEARNING AMONG 



felt disappointed, as T had fully anticipated a luminous account of 

 the existing state of the arts and sciences. 



On the following evening, in pursuance of an invitation by which 

 I had been honoured three months previously, I was admitted to a 

 very recherche conversazione, at the house of a noble lady celebrated 

 for her rank and talent, and at which the whole world was expected 

 to be present. A magnificent suite of rooms was most inconveniently 

 crowded, and it was not without a great deal of elbowing and 

 shouldering that 1 succeeded in reaching the circle. Here was our 

 hostess herself, in the midst of a galaxy of beauty and wisdom. She 

 was expatiating with considerable fluency on the particular qualities 

 of a new metal, of which a few grains only had been produced by 

 some chemical process, all subsequent attempts having failed. She 

 was followed by a gentleman who exhibited a small cameo, which 

 had been found in the stomach of an eel ; from which circumstance, 

 he endeavoured to prove that this species of fish migrates over 

 land, and that the one which had yielded the cameo he held in 

 his hand, must have travelled here from a country several 

 thousand miles distant, where such ornaments were commonly worn 

 some hundreds of years ago a fact too which proved its longevity. 

 This plausible inference gave great satisfaction, and I ventured to 

 ask if this remarkable fish had the soles of its shoes worn, when 

 it was caught? or, if barefoot, if its feet were callous, and showed 

 travel? "Why, what a question it is a fish, man, and has 

 neither legs nor feet, only some short fins." 1 of course apologised 

 for having made so mal-dpropos an inquiry, and pleaded ignorance, 

 merely observing that in my simplicity 1 had imagined that if an 

 animal had performed so long a journey, it must have had some 

 means of progression. 1 was heartily laughed at, and the meeting 

 broke up. 



For several weeks I diligently prosecuted my inquiries : every 

 literary or scientific reunion found me amongst its members, till 1 

 was wearied out and disgusted. Shallow foppery and learned folly 

 met me at every step ; and not only did I learn nothing useful, but 

 I began to fear that what little common sense and information I 

 possessed, would be driven out of my head by listening to such con- 

 tinued trifling. Sky, air, earth, and sea were ransacked for the sole 

 purpose of finding curiosities; and if these could not be found, the 

 most barefaced and absurd fancies were palmed upon the noble, the 

 learned, and the wealthy, by any one who had sufficient ingenuity to 

 conjure up a theory the more improbable the better. Here a man 

 picked up a dog's tooth, and lo ! a new species of animal was found 

 out to have inhabited the country at some unknown period : there 

 another breathed upon a heap of dust, and straightway the dust was 

 alive, and drawings made of its organs : here a third had his house 

 shook by a gust of wind, and the course of an earthquake was 

 traced : then a fourth coined a new mode of swearing, and was de- 

 clared to speak the language of heaven : here a fifth produced a bit 

 of coal bearing a faint impression of a reed or a fern-leaf, and built 

 upon this isolated and dubious foundation a complete system of 

 antediluvian botany : there a sixth framed a new plan for universal 



