None but those who, like myself, have once lived in intellectual
society, and then have been deprived of it for years, can appreciate
the delight of finding it again. Not that I have any right to
complain, if I were fated to live as a recluse for ever. I can add
little, or nothing, to the pleasure of any company; I like to listen
rather than to talk; and when anything apposite does occur to me, it
is generally the day after the conversation has taken place. I do
not, however, love good talk the less for these defects of mine; and
I console myself with thinking that I sustain the part of a
judicious listener, not always an easy one.

Great, then, was my delight at hearing last year that my old pupil,
Milverton, had taken a house which had long been vacant in our
neighbourhood. To add to my pleasure, his college friend,
Ellesmere, the great lawyer, also an old pupil of mine, came to us
frequently in the course of the autumn. Milverton was at that time
writing some essays which he occasionally read to Ellesmere and
myself. The conversations which then took place I am proud to say
that I have chronicled. I think they must be interesting to the
world in general, though of course not so much so as to me.

Milverton and Ellesmere were my favourite pupils. Many is the
heartache I have had at finding that those boys, with all their
abilities, would do nothing at the University. But it was in vain
to urge them. I grieve to say that neither of them had any ambition
of the right kind. Once I thought I had stimulated Ellesmere to the
proper care and exertion; when, to my astonishment and vexation,
going into his rooms about a month before an examination, I found
that, instead of getting up his subjects, like a reasonable man, he