social feeling.

Let us look at it a little, and, first of all, let the reader consider
the criticism, and not the critic. We may like very well, in our
individual capacity, to partake of the delicacies prepared by our
hostess's _chef_, we may not be adverse to _pate_, and myriad _objets
de gout_, and if you caught us in a corner at the next ball, putting
away a fair share of _dinde aux truffes_, we know you would have at us,
in a tone of great moral indignation, and wish to know why we sneaked
into great houses, eating good suppers, and drinking choice wines,
and then went away with an indigestion, to write dyspeptic disgusts
at society.

We might reply that it is necessary to know something of a subject
before writing about it, and that if a man wished to describe the
habits of South Sea Islanders, it is useless to go to Greenland; we
might also confess a partiality for _pate_, and a tenderness for
_truffes_, and acknowledge that, considering our single absence
would not put down extravagant, pompous parties, we were not strong
enough to let the morsels drop into unappreciating mouths; or we might
say, that if a man invited us to see his new house, it would not be
ungracious nor insulting to his hospitality, to point out whatever
weak parts we might detect in it, nor to declare our candid
conviction, that it was built upon wrong principles and could not
stand. He might believe us if we had been in the house, but he
certainly would not, if we had never seen it. Nor would it be a very
wise reply upon his part, that we might build a better if we didn't
like that. We are not fond of David's pictures, but we certainly could
never paint half so well; nor of Pope's poetry, but posterity will
never hear of our verses. Criticism is not construction, it is