"Oh no! I am tired to death! tired of everything! I would give the universe for a disposition less difficult to please. Yet, after all, what is there to give pleasure? When one has seen one thing, one has seen everything. Oh, 'tis heavy work! Don't you find it so, ma'am?" This speech was ended with so violent a fit of yawning that Cecilia would not trouble herself to answer it: but her silence as before passed unnoticed, exciting neither question nor comment. A long pause now succeeded, which he broke at last by saying, as he writhed himself about upon his seat, "These forms would be much more agreeable if there were backs to them. 'Tis intolerable to be forced to sit like a schoolboy. The first study of life is ease. There is indeed no other study that pays the trouble of attainment. Don't you think so, ma'am?" "But may not even that," said Cecilia, "by so much study become labor?" "I am vastly happy you think so." "Sir?" "I beg your pardon, ma'am, but I thought you said--I really beg your pardon, but I was thinking of something else." "You did very right, sir," said Cecilia, laughing, "for what I said by no means merited any attention." "Will you do me the favor to repeat it?" cried he, taking out his glass to examine some lady at a distance. "Oh no," said Cecilia, "that would be trying your patience too severely." "These glasses shew one nothing but defects," said he; "I am sorry they were ever invented. They are the ruin of all beauty; no complexion can stand them. I believe that solo will never be over! I hate a solo; it sinks, it depresses me intolerably." "You will presently, sir," said Cecilia, looking at the bill of the concert, "have a full piece; and that I hope will revive you." "A full piece! oh, insupportable! it stuns, it fatigues, it overpowers me beyond endurance! no taste in it, no delicacy, no room for the smallest feeling." "Perhaps, then, you are only fond of singing?" "I should be, if I could hear it; but we are now so miserably off in voices, that I hardly ever attempt to listen to a song, without fancying myself deaf from the feebleness of the performers. I hate everything that requires attention. Nothing gives pleasure that does not force its own way." "You only, then, like loud voices, and great powers?" "Oh, worse and worse!--no, nothing is so disgusting to me. All my amazement is that these people think it worth while to give concerts at all--one is sick to death of music." "Nay," cried Cecilia, "if it gives no pleasure, at least it takes none away; for, far from being any impediment to conversation, I think everybody talks more during the performance than between the acts. And what is there better you could substitute in its place?" Cecilia, receiving no answer to this question, again looked round to see if she had been heard; when she observed her new acquaintance, with a very thoughtful air, had turned from her to fix his eyes upon the statue of Britannia.