So, standing on the high ground of certain immunity from criticism and hostile judgment, I do not so much console myself as I do not stand in need of consolation. I rather give thanks for my mute and necessarily unoffending lips, and I shall go in great good-humor to Camilla's concert. There are many different ways of going to a concert. You can be one of a party of fashionable people to whom music is a diversion, a pastime, an agreeable change from the assembly or the theatre. They applaud, they condemn, they criticise with perfect _au-faitism_. (No one need say there is no such word. I know there was not yesterday, and perhaps will not be to-morrow; but that there is such a one to-day, you have but to open your eyes and see.) Into such company as this, even I, whose poor old head is always fretting itself wedged in where it has no business to be, have chanced to be thrown. This is torture. My cue is to turn into the Irishman's echo, which always returned for his "How d' ye do?" a "Pretty well, thank you." I cling to the skirts of that member of the party who is agreed to have the best taste and echo his responses an octave higher. If he sighs at the end of a song, I bring out my pocket-handkerchief. If he says "charming," I murmur "delicious." If he thinks it "exquisite," I pronounce it "enchanting." Where he is rapt in admiration, I go into a trance, and so shamble through the performances, miserable impostor that I am, and ten to one nobody finds out that I am a dunce, fit for treason, stratagem, and spoils. It is a great strain upon the mental powers, but it is wonderful to see how much may be accomplished and what skill may be attained by long practice. It is not ingenuous? I am afraid not quite. The guilt rest with those who make me incur it! You cannot even read a book with any degree of pleasure, if you know an opinion is expected of you at the finis. You leave the popular novel till people have forgotten to ask, "How do you like it?" How can you enjoy anything, if you are not at liberty to give yourself wholly to it, but must be all the while making up a speech to deliver when it is over? Nothing is better than to be a passive listener, but nothing is worse than to be obliged to turn yourself into a sounding-board: and must I have both the suffering and the guilt?