the most. You know how Mrs. ----, in spite of her red arms, her red gown,
her city pronunciation, and her city connexions, managed--by dint of
perseverance alone--to become a dispenser of consequence to the very
countesses whom she at first could scarcely coax into a courtesy. The
person who can stand ridicule and rudeness has only to desire to become
the fashion--she or he must be so sooner or later."

"Of the immutability of one thing among all the changes I may witness on
my return, at least I am certain no one still will dare to think for
himself. The great want of each individual is, the want of an opinion!
For instance, who judges of a picture from his own knowledge of painting?
Who does not wait to hear what Mr. ----, or Lord ---- (one of the six or
seven privileged connoisseurs), says of it? Nay, not only the fate of a
single picture, but of a whole school of painting, depends upon the
caprice of some one of the self-elected dictators. The King, or the Duke
of ----, has but to love the Dutch school and ridicule the Italian, and
behold a Raphael will not sell, and a Teniers rises into infinite value!
Dutch representations of candlesticks and boors are sought after with the
most rapturous delight; the most disagreeable objects of nature become the
most worshipped treasures of art; and we emulate each other in testifying
our exaltation of taste by contending for the pictured vulgarities by
which taste itself is the most essentially degraded. In fact, too, the
meaner the object, the more certain it is with us of becoming the rage.
In the theatre, we run after the farce; in painting, we worship the Dutch
school; in----"

"Literature?" said Saville.

"No!--our literature still breathes of something noble; but why? Because
books do not always depend upon a clique. A book, in order to succeed,