"Ah, Mr. Ricardo!" said I, laughing. "Well, now," said he, but his face gave way a little, "how are you any better off than those people?" "I don't wish to make myself an example, sir; but put them down here this evening, and what would they see in all this that we have been enjoying?" "They would see what you see, I suppose. They had reasonably good eyes--they were not microscopes or telescopes." "Precisely," said my father. "They would see what mere ordinary vision could take in, _without_ the quick discernment of finely trained sensibilities, and without the far-reaching and wide views of a mind rich in knowledge and associations. Where cultivated senses find a rare mingling of flavours, theirs would at best only perceive the difference of stronger or fainter--of more or less sweet." "Senses literal or figurative, do you mean?" "Both," said my father. "You rarely find the one cultivated without the other." "You may find the other without the one," said Mr. Ricardo. "I knew a man once who had no aptness for anything but judging of wines, and he was curious at that. He did it mostly by the sense of smell, too. All the mind the man had seemed to reside in his nose." "That is an instance of morbid development," said my father, smiling, "not in point." "You would have thought it was in point, if you had seen him," said Mr. Ricardo, glancing at my father. "But the pleasures of a cultivated taste, Mr. Ricardo," said I, "may be constantly enjoyed; and they are some of the purest, and most satisfying, and most unmixed that we have." "And, I maintain, of the most useful," said my father. "To the character," said Mr. Ricardo. "But I do not believe that, where they most prevail, are to be found in general the strongest minds or the most hopeful class of our population." "My good sir," said my father, "do not confound things that have nothing to do with each other. That may be true, and it may be equally true of sundry other matters, such as correct pronunciation and the usages of polite society, Mocha coffee and fine broadcloth,--none of which, I hope, have any deleterious effect upon mind." "Well, go on," said Mr. Ricardo, without looking at him, "let us hear how you make out your case." "Learning to draw nice distinctions, to feel shades of difference, becoming alive to the perception and enjoyment of most fine and delicate influences, the mind acquires a _habit of being_ which will discover itself in other matters than those of pure taste. This faculty of nice discrimination and quick feeling cannot be in high exercise in one department alone, without being applied more or less generally to other subjects. It will develope itself in the ordinary intercourse and relations of social and domestic life, and the _tendency_ will be to the producing or perfecting of that nice sense of proprieties, that quick feeling of what is due to or from others, which we call tact." "But tact cannot be given, papa," said I.