They will unconsciously talk to themselves, if they can find no one else to talk to; but this soliloquizing they are rarely forced to perform--for so great are their diligence and tact in hunting up some unlucky wight or other upon whom to vent their words, that they are seldom unsuccessful in their search. Horace, in one of his epistles, has most pathetically described, in his own person, the sufferings of all those who are so luckless as to be caught by one of these very benevolent tormentors of their species; and he has hit off, most admirably, their multiform powers of inflicting annoyance. But many ways and means, never "dreamt of in his philosophy," have since been discovered, which it devolves upon others, far his inferiors, to describe. In regard, for instance, to the choice of subjects, if a Blatterer may be deemed capable of choosing, our modern logocracies have opened a field of almost boundless extent, which, in Horace's day, was a "_terra incognita_." Their loquacity would utterly shame that ancient braggart, whose boast it was, that he could extemporize two hundred Latin verses, while standing on one leg; and their matchless talents for political mistification--for comminuting, and spreading out all sorts of materials susceptible of being used for party purposes, were never called forth, and consequently never developed, until many a century after Horace was in his grave. The present age--I may say, _the present times_, may justly claim the distinguished honor not only of furnishing more aliment for the nurture of the Blattering order than any other age or times--but, on the political economy principle, that, "_demand will always beget supply_," to them must be awarded the exclusive merit of furnishing a much greater number of such patriotic operatives than ever could be found before, since our father Noah left his ark. In proof of this assertion, I would ask, where is there now any hole or corner, either in public or private life, in which Blatterers may not often be heard? Where is there any electioneering ground--any hustings to hold an election--any forensic assemblage, or legislative halls, exempt entirely from these most successful confounders and despisers of all grammatical and rhetorical rules--of all the plainest dictates of common sense? As every thing they utter seems the result rather of chance than design, it might be supposed that the former would occasionally lead them, (especially when acting as public functionaries,) at least into some approximation towards argument or eloquence; but, alas! no such chance ever befalls them. By a kind of fatality, apparently unsusceptible of change or "shadow of turning," all their efforts at {363} either eloquence or argument, turn out most pitiable or ridiculous abortions; for they invariably mistake assertion for the latter, and empty, bombastic declamation and gasconading for the former. Vociferation they always mistake for