This person eschewed partisanship, because it would give him trouble to belong to a party. His principle was to possess and enjoy animally every luxury within his reach; but at the same time to avoid those excesses which are palpably and obviously ruinous to the constitution. He had made the experiment for very few years, but he began to find thus early that the experiment was not likely to succeed. For want of exertion and activity the keenness of his relish had already begun to abate; and by carefully extracting the bitter ingredients from life's cup and casting them away, he found that its sweets were sickening and saturating. Whatever was annoying to mind or body, he endeavoured, and in most cases successfully, to avoid. But there was gradually and surely coming upon him the bitterest of all annoyances; that kind of mental suffering which is only describable in the language of paradox, and which we will set down for the purpose of giving the purblind puppies of criticism something to yelp at. He was then beginning to feel the bitterness of sweetness, the darkness of light, the discord of harmony, the solitude of society, the weariness of rest, the deformity of beauty; but he knew not how and from whence this annoyance was coming upon him. He had felt that sensibility was painful, and he had suppressed or neutralized it; he avoided the sight or thought of suffering, for he felt that sympathy with pain was painful. He had not exercised the powers of his mind, lest that exercise should interfere with that system of luxurious enjoyment which he had adopted. He had despised and derided the moral feeling, and had studiously guarded himself against all reproofs which conscience might administer to him. But with all this care he experienced feelings far more oppressive than those against which he guarded. Now the Right Honorable Lord Spoonbill was also a man of no mental exertion, but he was a man of no mental power; he also was sensual, but his was not a deliberate and studied sensuality, it was purely animal and instinctive. He was an Epicurean, but not an Epicurean philosopher. At Cambridge he had been acquainted with this Mr Erpingham, and he had admired the dextrous sophistry by which this gentleman had proved the worse to be the better cause. Mr Erpingham had also been proud of the acquaintance with nobility, though Lord Spoonbill was a younger man than he. And they had become the confidents and companions of each others profligacies. In a difficulty therefore of that kind to which we have above alluded, it is not to be wondered at that his lordship should enter into consultation, or at least into conversation, concerning the subject with his good friend Erpingham.