"I went to town," replied I, "with a mind eager for intellectual pleasure. My memory was not quite unfurnished with passages which I thought likely to be adverted to, and which might serve to embellish conversation, without incurring the charge of pedantry. But though most of the men I conversed with were my equals in education, and my superiors in talent, there seemed little disposition to promote such topics as might bring our understandings into play. Whether it is that business, active life, and public debate, absorb the mind, and make men consider society rather as a scene to rest than to exercise it, I know not; certain it is that they brought less into the treasury of conversation than I expected; not because they were poor, but proud, or idle, and reserved their talents and acquisitions for higher occasions. The most opulent possessors, I often found the most penurious contributors." "_Rien de trop_," said Mr. Stanley, "was the favorite maxim of an author[3] whom I am not apt to quote for rules of moral conduct. Yet its adoption would be a salutary check against excess in all our pursuits. If polite learning is undervalued by the mere man of science, it is perhaps over-rated by the mere man of letters. If it dignifies retirement, and exalts society, it is not the great business of life; it is not the prime fountain of moral excellence." [Footnote 3: Frederic the Great, king of Prussia.] "Well, so much for _man_," said Sir John, "but, Charles, you have not told us what you had to say of _woman_, in your observations on society." "As to woman," replied I, "I declare that I found more propensity to promote subjects of taste and elegant speculation among some of the superior class of females, than in many of my own sex. The more prudent, however, are restrained through fear of the illiberal sarcasms of men who, not contented to suppress their own faculties, ridicule all intellectual exertion in woman, though evidently arising from a modest desire of improvement, and not the vanity of hopeless rivalry." "Charles is always the Paladin of the reading ladies," said Sir John. "I do not deny it," replied I, "if they bear their faculties meekly. But I confess that what is sneeringly called a learned lady, is to me far preferable to a scientific one, such as I encountered one evening, who talked of the fulcrum, and the lever, and the statera, which she took care to tell us was the Roman steel-yard, with all the sang-froid of philosophical conceit." "Scientific men," said Sir John, "are in general admirable for their simplicity, but in a technical woman, I have seldom found a grain of taste or elegance."