Reflections of this sort make me very uncomfortable, and I am ready to cry with vexation when I think on my misspent life. If I was insensible to a higher order of merit, and indifferent to a nobler kind of praise, I should be happier far; but to be tormented with the sentiment of an honourable ambition and with aspirations after better things, and at the same time so sunk in sloth and bad habits as to be incapable of those exertions without which their objects are unattainable, is of all conditions the worst. I sometimes think that it would be better for me, as I am not what I might have been (if my education had been less neglected, and my mind had undergone a better system of moral discipline), if I was still lower than I am in the scale, and belonged entirely to a more degraded caste; and then again, when I look forward to that period which is fast approaching-- When ... a sprightlier age-- Comes tittering on to drive one from the stage-- I am thankful that I have still something in store, that though far below the wise and the learned, I am still something raised above the ignorant mob, that though much of my mental substance has been wasted, I have enough left to appear respectably in the world, and that I have at least preserved that taste for literary pursuits which I cling to as the greatest of blessings and the best security against the tedium and vacuity which are the indispensable concomitants of an idle youth and an ignorant old age. [Page Head: CONVERSATION AT HOLLAND HOUSE.] As a slight but imperfect sketch of the talk of Holland House I will put down this:--