the most melancholy and the most wasted portion of our life. Maltravers
had not yet found out either /the set/ that pleased him or the species
of amusement that really amused. Therefore he drifted on and about the
vast whirlpool, making plenty of friends--going to balls and
dinners--and bored with both as men are who have no object in society.
Now the way society is enjoyed is to have a pursuit, a /metier/ of some
kind, and then to go into the world, either to make the individual
object a social pleasure, or to obtain a reprieve from some toilsome
avocation. Thus, if you are a politician--politics at once make an
object in your closet, and a social tie between others and yourself when
you are in the world. The same may be said of literature, though in a
less degree; and though, as fewer persons care about literature than
politics, your companions must be more select. If you are very young,
you are fond of dancing; if you are very profligate, perhaps you are
fond of flirtations with your friend's wife. These last are objects in
their way: but they don't last long, and, even with the most frivolous,
are not occupations that satisfy the whole mind and heart, in which
there is generally an aspiration after something useful. It is not
vanity alone that makes a man of the /mode/ invent a new bit or give his
name to a new kind of carriage; it is the influence of that mystic
yearning after utility, which is one of the master-ties between the
individual and the species.

Maltravers was not happy--that is a lot common enough; but he was not
amused--and that is a sentence more insupportable. He lost a great part
of his sympathy with Cleveland, for, when a man is not amused, he feels
an involuntary contempt for those who are. He fancies they are pleased
with trifles which his superior wisdom is compelled to disdain.
Cleveland was of that age when we generally grow social--for by being
rubbed long and often against the great loadstone of society, we obtain,