business at the table, which is spread at, I think, too early an
hour (between one and two) for men who have letters to write and
accounts to settle after paying due respect to the bottle.

However, when numerous circles are to be brought together, and when
neither literature nor public amusements furnish topics for
conversation, a good dinner appears to be the only centre to rally
round, especially as scandal, the zest of more select parties, can
only be whispered. As for politics, I have seldom found it a
subject of continual discussion in a country town in any part of the
world. The politics of the place, being on a smaller scale, suits
better with the size of their faculties; for, generally speaking,
the sphere of observation determines the extent of the mind.

The more I see of the world, the more I am convinced that
civilisation is a blessing not sufficiently estimated by those who
have not traced its progress; for it not only refines our
enjoyments, but produces a variety which enables us to retain the
primitive delicacy of our sensations. Without the aid of the
imagination all the pleasures of the senses must sink into
grossness, unless continual novelty serve as a substitute for the
imagination, which, being impossible, it was to this weariness, I
suppose, that Solomon alluded when he declared that there was
nothing new under the sun!--nothing for the common sensations
excited by the senses. Yet who will deny that the imagination and
understanding have made many, very many discoveries since those
days, which only seem harbingers of others still more noble and
beneficial? I never met with much imagination amongst people who
had not acquired a habit of reflection; and in that state of society
in which the judgment and taste are not called forth, and formed by