An excessive indulgence in the pleasures of social life constitutes the great interests of a luxuriant and opulent age; but of late, while the arts of assembling in large societies have been practised, varied by all forms, and pushed on to all excesses, it may become a question whether by them our happiness is as much improved, or our individual character as well formed as in a society not so heterogeneous and unsocial as that crowd termed, with the sort of modesty peculiar to our times, "a small party:" the simplicity of parade, the humility of pride engendered by the egotism which multiplies itself in proportion to the numbers it assembles.
It may, too, be a question whether the literary man and the artist are not immolating their genius to society when, in the shadowiness of assumed talents--that counterfeiting of all shapes--they lose their real form, with the mockery of Proteus.

But nets of roses catch their feet, and a path, where all the senses are flattered, is now opened to win an Epictetus from his hut.

The art of multiplying the enjoyments of society is discovered in the morning lounge, the evening dinner, and the midnight coterie.

In frivolous fatigues, and vigils without meditation, perish the unvalued hours which, true genius knows, are always too brief for art, and too rare to catch its inspirations.

Hence so many of our contemporaries, whose card-racks are crowded, have produced only flashy fragments.
Efforts, but not works--they seem to be effects without causes; and as a great author, who is not one of them, once observed to me, "They waste a barrel of gunpowder in squibs." And yet it is seduction, and not reward, which mere fashionable society offers the man of true genius.