“No,” said he, “studying a new class of the community. Do you know any of what they call the 'lower classes'?”
“Yes.”
“Monstrous agreeable people, are they not?”
“No, very stupid! I only know two old women—except the servants, who have no characters. They imitate us, I suspect, which does not say much for their taste.”
“But some of my friends are young women; that makes all the difference.”
“It does! and you ought to be ashamed. If you want a low order of mind, why desert our own circle?”
“My friends are only low in station; they have rather lofty minds, some of them.”
“Well, amuse yourself with these lofty minds. Amusement is the end of being, you know, and the aim of all the men of this day.”
“We imitate the ladies,” said he, slyly.
“You do,” answered she, very dryly; and so the dialogue went on, and Lord Ipsden found the pleasure of being with his cousin compensate him fully for the difference of their opinions; in fact, he found it simply amusing that so keen a wit as his cousins s could be entrapped into the humor of decrying the time one happens to live in, and admiring any epoch one knows next to nothing about, and entrapped by the notion of its originality, above all things; the idea being the stale commonplace of asses in every age, and the manner of conveying the idea being a mere imitation of the German writers, not the good ones, bien entendu, but the quill-drivers, the snobs of the Teutonic pen.