“So it was,” said Repton. “It was Curran wine run to the lees! and very unlike the racy flavor of the true liquor. And to speak in all seriousness, what has come over us all to be thus degenerate and fallen? It is not alone that we have not the equals of the first-rate men, but we really have nothing to compare with O'Grady, and Parsons, and a score of others.” “I 'll tell you why,” cried Niel,--“the commodity is n't marketable. The stupid men, who will always be the majority everywhere, have got up the cry, that to be agreeable is to be vulgar. We know how large cravats came into fashion; tiresome people came in with high neckcloths.” “I wish they 'd go out with hempen ones, then,” muttered Repton. “I 'd not refuse them the benefit of the clergy,” said Niel, with a malicious twinkle of the eye, that showed how gladly, when occasion offered, he flung a pebble at the Church. “They were very brilliant,--they were very splendid, I own,” said Rawlins; “but I have certain misgivings that they gave themselves too much to society.” “Expended too much of their powder in fireworks,” cried Niel, sharply,--“so they did; but their rockets showed how high they could rise to.” “Ay, Niel, and we only burn our fingers with ours,” said Repton, sarcastically. “Depend upon it,” resumed Rawlins, “as the world grows more practical, you will have less of great convivial display. Agreeability will cease to be the prerogative of first-rate men, but be left to the smart people of society, who earn their soup by their sayings.” “He's right,” cried Niel, in his shrillest tone. “The age of alchemists is gone; the sleight-of-hand man and the juggler have succeeded him.” “And were they not alchemists?” exclaimed old Repton, enthusiastically. “Did they not transmute the veriest dross of the earth, and pour it forth from the crucible of their minds a stream of liquid gold?--glorious fellows, who, in the rich abundance of their minds, brought the learning of their early days to illustrate the wisdom of their age, and gave the fresh-heartedness of the schoolboy to the ripe intelligence of manhood.” “And yet how little have they bequeathed to us!” said Niel. “Would it were even less,” broke in Repton. “We read the witticism of brilliant conversera in some diary or journal, often ill recorded, imperfectly given, always unaccompanied by the accessories of the scene wherein they occurred. We have not the crash, the tumult, the headlong flow of social intercourse, where the impromptu fell like a thunderbolt, and the bon mots rattled like a fire of musketry. To attempt to convey an impression of these great talkers by a memoir, is like to picture a battle by reading out a list of the killed and wounded.” “Repton is right!” exclaimed Niel. “The recorded bon mot is the words of a song without the music.” “And often where it was the melody that inspired the verses,” added Repton, always glad to follow up an illustration.