There is less excuse in a University town than in any other for adopting this pompous and formal view of the duties of society, because there are very few unoccupied people in such a place.  My own occupations, such as they are, fill the hours from breakfast to luncheon and from tea to dinner; men of sedentary lives, who do a good deal of brainwork, find an hour or two of exercise and fresh air a necessity in the afternoon.  Indeed, a man who cares about his work, and who regards it as a primary duty, finds no occupation more dispiriting, more apt to unfit him for serious work, than pacing from house to house in the early afternoon, delivering a pack of visiting-cards, varied by a perfunctory conversation, seated at the edge of an easy-chair, on subjects of inconceivable triviality.  Of course there are men so constituted that they find this pastime a relief and a pleasure; but their felicity of temperament ought not to be made into a rule for serious-minded men.  The only social institution which might really prove beneficial in a University is an informal evening salon.  If people might drop in uninvited, in evening dress or not, as was convenient, from nine to ten in the evening, at a pleasant house, it would be a rational practice; but few such experiments seem ever to be tried.

Moreover, the one thing that is fatal to all spontaneous social enjoyment is that the guests should, like the maimed and blind in the parable, be compelled to come in.  The frame of mind of an eminent Cabinet Minister whom I once accompanied to an evening party rises before my mind.  He was in deep depression at having to go; and when I ventured to ask his motive in going, he said, with an air of unutterable self-sacrifice, “I suppose that we ought sometimes to be ready to submit to the tortures we inflict on others.”  Imagine a circle of guests assembled in such a frame of mind, and it would seem that one had all the materials for a thoroughly pleasant party.

I was lately taken by a friend, with whom I was staying in the country, to a garden party.  I confess that I think it would be hard to conceive circumstances less favourable to personal enjoyment.  The day was hot, and I was uncomfortably dressed.  I found myself first in a hot room, where the host and hostess were engaged in what is called receiving.  A stream of pale, perspiring people moved slowly through, some of them frankly miserable, some with an air of false geniality, which deceived no one, written upon their faces.  “So pleasant to see so many friends!” “What a delightful day you have got for your party!” Such ineptitudes were the current coin of the market.  I passed on into another room where refreshment, of a nature that I did not want, was sadly accepted.  And I then passed out into the open air; the garden was disagreeably crowded; there was “a din of doubtful talk,” as Rossetti says.  The sun beat down dizzily on my streaming brow.  I joined group after group, where the conversation was all of the same easy and stimulating