If it be said that a French gentleman would not have been equally condescending to a French tradesman, I answer that the former would never have perpetrated the only insult for which the latter might think there could be only one atonement. Besides, even if this objection held good, there is a difference between the duties of a native and a stranger. In receiving the advantages of a foreign country, one ought to be doubly careful not to give offence, and it is therefore doubly incumbent upon us to redress it when given. To the feelings of the person I had offended, there was but one redress. Who can blame me if I granted it? CHAPTER XIV. Erat homo ingeniosus, acutus, acer, et qui plurimum et salis haberet et fellis, nec candoris minus.--Pliny. I do not know a more difficult character to describe than Lord Vincent’s. Did I imitate certain writers, who think that the whole art of pourtraying individual character is to seize hold of some prominent peculiarity, and to introduce this distinguishing trait, in all times and in all scenes, the difficulty would be removed. I should only have to present to the reader a man, whose conversation was nothing but alternate jest and quotation--a due union of Yorick and Partridge. This would, however, be rendering great injustice to the character I wish to delineate. There were times when Vincent was earnestly engrossed in discussion in which a jest rarely escaped him, and quotation was introduced only as a serious illustration, not as a humorous peculiarity. He possessed great miscellaneous erudition, and a memory perfectly surprising for its fidelity and extent. He was a severe critic, and had a peculiar art of quoting from each author he reviewed, some part that particularly told against him. Like most men, in the theory of philosophy he was tolerably rigid; in its practice, more than tolerably loose. By his tenets you would have considered him a very Cato for stubbornness and sternness: yet was he a very child in his concession to the whim of the moment. Fond of meditation and research, he was still fonder of mirth and amusement; and while he was among the most instructive, he was also the boonest of companions. When alone with me, or with men whom he imagined like me, his pedantry (for more or less, he always was pedantic) took only a jocular tone; with the savan or the bel esprit, it became grave, searching, and sarcastic. He was rather a contradicter than a favourer of ordinary opinions: and this, perhaps, led him not unoften into paradox: yet was there much soundness, even in his most vehement notions, and the strength of mind which made him think only for himself, was visible in all the productions it created. I have hitherto only given his conversation in one of its moods; henceforth I shall be just enough occasionally to be dull, and to present it sometimes to the reader in a graver tone.