Call it oddity, eccentricity, humour, or what you please, it is evident that the special flavour of mind or manner which, independently of fortune, station, or profession, sets a man apart and makes him distinguishable from his fellows, and which gives the charm of picturesqueness to society, is fast disappearing from amongst us.  A man may count the odd people of his acquaintance on his fingers; and it is observable that these odd people are generally well stricken in years.  They belong more to the past generation than to the present.  Our young men are terribly alike.  For these many years back, the young gentlemen I have had the fortune to encounter are clever, knowing, selfish, disagreeable; the young ladies are of one pattern, like minted sovereigns of the same reign,—­excellent gold, I have no doubt, but each bearing the same awfully proper image and superscription.  There are no blanks in the matrimonial lottery nowadays, but the prizes are all of a value, and there is but one kind of article given for the ticket.  Courtship is an absurdity and a sheer waste of time.  If a man could but close his eyes in a ball-room, dash into a bevy of muslin beauties, carry off the fair one that accident gives to his arms, his raid would be as reasonable and as likely to produce happiness as the more ordinary methods of procuring a spouse.  If a man has to choose one guinea out of a bag containing one hundred and fifty, what can he do?  What wonderful wisdom can he display in his choice?  There is no appreciable difference of value in the golden pieces.  The latest coined are a little fresher, that’s all.  An act of uniformity, with heavy penalties for recusants, seems to have been passed upon the English race.  That we can quite well account for this state of things, does not make the matter better, does not make it the less our duty to fight against it.  We are apt to be told that men are too busy and women too accomplished for humour of speech or originality of character or manner.  In the truth of this lies the pity of it.  If, with the exceptions of hedges that divide fields, and streams that run as marches between farms, every inch of soil were drained, ploughed, manured, and under that improved cultivation rushing up into astonishing wheaten and oaten crops, enriching tenant and proprietor, the aspect of the country would be decidedly uninteresting, and would present scant attraction to the man riding or walking through it.  In such a world the tourists would be few.  Personally, I should detest a world all red and ruled with the ploughshare in spring, all covered with harvest in autumn.  I wish a little variety.  I desiderate moors and barren places:  the copse where you can flush the woodcock; the warren where, when you approach, you can see the twinkle of innumerable rabbit tails; and, to tell the truth, would not feel sorry although Reynard himself had a hole beneath the wooded bank, even if the demands of his rising family cost