It is, indeed, the evident tendency of all literature to generalise and _dissipate_ character, by giving men the same artificial education, and the same common stock of ideas; so that we see all objects from the same point of view, and through the same reflected medium;—we learn to exist, not in ourselves, but in books;—all men become alike mere readers—spectators, not actors in the scene, and lose all proper personal identity. The templar, the wit, the man of pleasure, and the man of fashion, the courtier and the citizen, the knight and the squire, the lover and the miser—_Lovelace_, _Lothario_, _Will Honeycomb_, and _Sir Roger de Coverley_, _Sparkish_ and _Lord Foppington_, _Western_ and _Tom Jones_, _My Father_, and _My Uncle Toby_, _Millamant_ and _Sir Sampson Legend_, _Don Quixote_ and _Sancho_, _Gil Blas_ and _Guzman d’Alfarache_, _Count Fathom_ and _Joseph Surface_,—have all met, and exchanged common-places on the barren plains of the _haute littérature_—toil slowly on to the Temple of Science, seen a long way off upon a level, and end in one dull compound of politics, criticism, chemistry, and metaphysics! We cannot expect to reconcile opposite things. If, for example, any of us were to put ourselves into the stage-coach from Salisbury to London, it is more than probable we should not meet with the same number of odd accidents, or ludicrous distresses on the road, that befell _Parson Adams_; but why, if we get into a common vehicle, and submit to the conveniences of modern travelling, should we complain of the want of adventures? Modern manners may be compared to a modern stage-coach: our limbs may be a little cramped with the confinement, and we may grow drowsy; but we arrive safe, without any very amusing or very sad accident, at our journey’s end.