It is a fault only to be cured by experience
and knowledge of the world, which soon teaches every sensible and
acute person the important lesson, that amusement, and, what is of
more consequence, that information and increase of knowledge, are to
be derived from the conversation of every individual whatever, with
whom he is thrown into a natural train of communication. For
ourselves, we can assure the reader--and perhaps if we have ever been
able to afford him amusement, it is owing in a great degree to this
cause--that we never found ourselves in company with the stupidest of
all possible companions in a post-chaise, or with the most arrant
cumber-corner that ever occupied a place in the mail-coach, without
finding, that, in the course of our conversation with him, we had some
ideas suggested to us, either grave orgay, or some information
communicated in the course of our journey, which we should have
regretted not to have learned, and which we should be sorry to have
immediately forgotten. But Nigel was somewhat immured within the
Bastile of his rank, as some philosopher (Tom Paine, we think) has
happily enough expressed that sort of shyness which men of dignified
situations are apt to be beset with, rather from not exactly knowing
how far, or with whom, they ought to be familiar, than from any real
touch of aristocratic pride. Besides, the immediate pressure of our
adventurer's own affairs was such as exclusively to engross his
attention.
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