But, although each of the notable Athenians has his peculiar place and way of holding forth, there is a regular intercourse among them all; and accounts current of praise or censure are as regular and frequent among the Athenians, as those of cash are among other people. Indeed, if it were not for this curious banking system, it is very doubtful whether the intellectual “patrimony or conquest” of any one Athenian would be sufficient to set him up in business as a regular and everyday subject of conversation. Thus, whenever you find an Athenian cutting his first figure, no matter what sort of figure it is, in one part of the city, you are sure to hear somebody making a great deal of noise either for or against that figure in another part. But manners are, however, somewhat like the mind itself,--we can observe their phenomena, and trace their effects; but, as they are in themselves nothing more than the various states of an ever-changing something which we can never exactly comprehend, no abstract disquisition upon them, even as they are found in the Athens, would bear to be read, although one should be at the trouble of writing it. When we grapple with them in real flesh and blood, and can say that this is Archy Campbell, or this his Majesty’s Advocate,--that this is Mrs. Macspine, who studies the Differential Calculus,--or that Lady Macfidget, who calculates differences, or makes them for other people’s calculation,--then the gentle readers draw their chairs together, and prepare for that most delectable of all entertainments,--the dissection of an individual character; but when we treat of the disembodied virtues or vices, we are allowed the sole and exclusive benefit of our lucubrations.