Perhaps literature has never been so directly benefited by the spirit of trade as it was in the seventeenth century, when European jewellers found their most liberal customers in the courts of the East.  Some of the best travels which we possess, as well as the best materials for Persian and Indian history, have been left us by persons engaged in that trade.  From that time travelling became less dangerous and more frequent in every generation, except during the late years when Englishmen were excluded from the Continent by the military tyrant whom (with God’s blessing on a rightful cause) we have beaten from his imperial throne.  And now it is more customary for females in the middle rank of life to visit Italy than it was for them in your days to move twenty miles from home.

Sir Thomas More.—­Is this a salutary or an injurious fashion?

Montesinos.—­According to the subject, and to the old school maxim quicquid recipitur, recipitur in modum recipientis.  The wise come back wiser, the well-informed with richer stores of knowledge, the empty and the vain return as they went, and there are some who bring home foreign vanities and vices in addition to their own.

Sir Thomas More.—­And what has been imported by such travellers for the good of their country?

Montesinos.—­Coffee in the seventeenth century, inoculation in that which followed; since which we have had now and then a new dance and a new game at cards, curry and mullagatawny soup from the East Indies, turtle from the West, and that earthly nectar to which the East contributes its arrack, and the West its limes and its rum.  In the language of men it is called Punch; I know not what may be its name in the Olympian speech.  But tell not the Englishmen of George the Second’s age, lest they should be troubled for the degeneracy of their grandchildren, that the punchbowl is now become a relic of antiquity, and their beloved beverage almost as obsolete as metheglin, hippocras, chary, or morat!

Sir Thomas More.—­It is well for thee that thou art not a young beagle instead of a grey-headed bookman, or that rambling vein of thine would often bring thee under the lash of the whipper-in!  Off thou art and away in pursuit of the smallest game that rises before thee.

Montesinos.—­Good Ghost, there was once a wise Lord Chancellor, who in a dialogue upon weighty matters thought it not unbecoming to amuse himself with discursive merriment concerning St. Appollonia and St. Uncumber.

Sir Thomas More.—­Good Flesh and Blood, that was a nipping reply!  And happy man is his dole who retains in grave years, and even to grey hairs, enough of green youth’s redundant spirits for such excursiveness!  He who never relaxes into sportiveness is a wearisome companion, but beware of him who jests at everything!  Such men disparage by some ludicrous association all objects which are presented to their thoughts, and thereby render themselves incapable of any emotion which can either elevate or soften them, they bring upon their moral being an influence more withering than the blast of the desert.  A countenance, if it be wrinkled either with smiles or with frowns, is to be shunned; the furrows which the latter leave show that the soil is sour, those of the former are symptomatic of a hollow heart.