The writer takes occasion to regret the narrow spirit which prevents our nobility, or, to speak more properly, our fashionable coteries, from acquiring a healthier tone, by mixing with societies in which habits of more vigorous thought predominate. In France, to whatever degree frivolity may be carried, a French lady would be ashamed not to affect an interest in the great writers by whom her country has been ennobled; and to betray an ignorance of their works, or an indifference to their renown, would be considered a proof not only of the greatest stupidity, but of bad taste and unrefined habits. Here we are distinguished unfavourably from our neighbours--exceptions, of course, there must always be--but in general to betray an acquaintance with any literature beyond the last novel, or the current trash and gossip of the day, might provoke the charge of pedantry, but at any rate would fail in exciting the slightest sympathy. Hence men of letters, and women of letters, form a caste by themselves much to their own disadvantage, and still more to the injury of those to the improvement of whom they might imperceptibly contribute; hence the statesman, or the lawyer, or the writer, generally keeps aloof from the great world, which he leaves to idle young men and aged coxcombs; or, if he enters it, takes care to abstain from those topics on which his conversation would be most natural, instructing, and entertaining. Instances, indeed, may be found, where men, eminent for science and literature, or of high professional reputation, inflamed with a distempered appetite for fashionable society, "drag their slow lengths along" among the guardsmen and dowagers who frequent such scenes; but they are rather tolerated than encouraged, and the sacrifices by which they purchase their admission into the dullest society of Europe are so numerous, their appearance is so mortifying, and the effect produced upon themselves so pernicious, that hitherto such instances have served not as models to imitate, but as bywords to deter. Instead of improving others, they degrade themselves; instead of inspiring the frivolous with nobler aims and better principles, they condescend to be the echoes of imbecility; instead of raising the standard of conversation, they yield implicitly to any signal, however corrupt, worthless, or utterly unreasonable may be the quarter from which it proceeds, that the most submissive votaries of fashion watch for and obey. The system is denounced by our author in the following vigorous and eloquent passage:--