she cannot afford to flirt except pour le bon motif, and I cannot afford, as a younger brother, to marry a girl with £50,000. She is sure to have been brought up like a duchess, and want the whole of her money for pin-money—a deuced expensive thing is a girl with £50,000!" Then he rattled on to others. I told him I did not think much of the young men of the day. "There now," he answered, "drink of the spring nearest to you, and be thankful; by being too fastidious you will get nothing."
I took a great dislike to the regular Blue Stocking; I can remember reading somewhere such a good description of her: "One who possesses every qualification to distinguish herself in conversation, well read and intelligent, her manner cold, her head cooler, her heart the coolest of all, never the dupe of her own sentiments; she examined her people before she adopted them, a necessary precaution where light is borrowed."
A great curiosity to me were certain married people, who were known never to speak to each other at home, but who respected the convenances of society so much that even if they never met in private they took care to be seen together in public, and to enter evening parties together with smiling countenances.
Somebody writes:
Have they not got polemics and reform,
Peace, war, the taxes, and what is called the Nation,
The struggle to be pilots in the storm,
The landed and the moneyed speculation,
The joys of mutual hate to keep them warm
Instead of love, that mere hallucination?
