Reviews of A Narrative of a Year's Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia, 1862-63 by William Gifford Palgrave, Published 1865 [‎1r] (1/42)

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Miss Berrj'5 Memoirs.
179
bears to Splaying cards,' and which presupposes, not previous
study, but the long and due preparation of the imagination
and the intellect.
It follows that with us the conversationist is rather looked
upon with curiosity and interest as a man endowed with a special
gift, than accepted as an acquisition to the social commerce of
j ^ s ^ en i n ^ to the philosophical monologues of Coleridge,
the illustrated anecdotes and fanciful sallies of Sydney Smith,
the rich outpourings of Lord Macaulay's infinite knowledge,
or the picturesque and prophetic utterances of Mr. Carlyle, we
have been conscious that we were rather enjoying a substitute for
good conversation than additions to the common stock. The
monopoly of attention which was required was, in most cases,
willingly conceded; but even the wonderful intellectual exhibi
tion did not make up for the deficiency in that sympathy between
the speaker and the hearers which gives a relish to very ordinary
parlance and very inferior wit, and which heightens tenfold the
enjoyment of the communication of brighter and loftier ideas.
It is noticeable that certain English persons, notwithstanding
the impediments of the language, produce more effect in con
versation with foreigners than with their own countrymen.
We suspect this must, to some extent, have been the case
with Miss Berry, to have elicited such warm expressions of
admiration from Madame de Stael, who attached special im
portance to that faculty. All visitors from the Continent were
thoroughly at home in Miss Berry's solon. Good nature and
good sense were really all that could be predicated of the sub
stance of her usual talk, but in the manner of it there was
a cheerful appreciation of all that was said or done, which
gave encouragement to the shiest,—an appeal to any wit or
wisdom the room might hold to come out and show itself, which
was larely unheard, and a simplicity which dispersed by its
contact all insolence or assumption. Add to this the knowledge
and the interest acquired by an acute observation and a retentive
memory through this unusually long and varied life, and you
have a combination all the more agreeable from its absence of
the marvellous or the sublime. The greater part of the fre
quenters of Miss Berry's society might think themselves at least
as clever and well-read as she was; and, though they were
probably mistaken, they did not go away with less self-satisfac
tion. The conversation at Lydia White's might have been more
literary, and at Lady Davy's more scientific, but the Miss Berrys J
had a flavour of fashion about it, which is not distasteful even to
the most philosophic or matter-of-fact Englishman, and kept
itself totally free from any speciality which could be made an
n 2
object