_The Hon. Mrs. Pinmoney._ Tastes, feelings, and character! Why, my love, you really do seem to believe yourself in the age of chivalry, when those words certainly signified very essential differences. But now the matter is, very happily, simplified. Tastes,—they depend on the fashion. There is always a fashionable taste: a taste for driving the mail—a taste for acting Hamlet—a taste for philosophical lectures—a taste for the marvellous—a taste for the simple—a taste for the brilliant—a taste for the sombre—a taste for the tender—a taste for the grim—a taste for banditti—a taste for ghosts—a taste for the devil—a taste for French dancers and Italian singers, and German whiskers and tragedies—a taste for enjoying the country in November, and wintering in London till the end of the dog-days—a taste for making shoes—a taste for picturesque tours—a taste for taste itself, or for essays on taste;—but no gentleman would be so rash as have a taste of his own, or his last winter’s taste, or any taste, my love, but the fashionable taste. Poor dear Mr. Pinmoney was reckoned a man of exquisite taste among all his acquaintance; for the new taste, let it be what it would, always fitted him as well as his new coat, and he was the very pink and mirror of fashion, as much in the one as the other.—So much for tastes, my dear. _Anthelia._ I am afraid I shall always be a very unfashionable creature; for I do not think I should have sympathised with any one of the tastes you have just enumerated. _The Hon. Mrs. Pinmoney._ You are so contumacious, such a romantic heretic from the orthodox supremacy of fashion. Now, as for feelings, my dear, you know there are no such things in the fashionable world; therefore that difficulty vanishes even more easily than the first. _Anthelia._ I am sorry for it. _The Hon. Mrs. Pinmoney._ Sorry! Feelings are very troublesome things, and always stand in the way of a person’s own interests. Then, as to character, a gentleman’s character is usually in the keeping of his banker, or his agent, or his steward, or his solicitor; and if they can certify and demonstrate that he has the means of keeping a handsome equipage, and a town and country house, and of giving routs and dinners, and of making a good settlement on the happy object of his choice—what more of any gentleman’s character would you desire to know?