The age of Johnsonism is departed; and in these days, instead of running after a “good talk,” there is nothing which the people would run more resolutely from. This is the age of hurry and bustle, and of doing, not talking. It is the age of machinery and iron. We do every thing by mechanical contrivance: we print by it, travel by it, count by it, and very soon, we expect, we shall talk by it. All our great discoveries and inventions are unfavourable to speech. What need to speak, indeed, when almost every thing we may wish to say or hear of is printed? No occasion to ask our neighbour questions, or to moot points of any kind with us: the press answers and discusses them all most satisfactorily. Printing is driving conversation out of the world. It is rendering it not only superfluous, but impracticable; for how is it possible to find time to read all that is given us to read in these days, and to go on talking after the old fashion? The thing is manifestly impossible; and our own conclusion is, that we are hurrying on rapidly to the age of pure taciturnity. When the sun of this solemn age shall have reached its meridian, talking will have passed into the mouths of old women and sucklings, or of merely professional people. We say professional people, because, though conversation in general will have become monosyllabic, or be carried on perhaps by signals, without the use of speech at all, we yet think it highly probable that there will be persons who will occupy themselves with it as a profession. This will be only a carrying out of the grand principle of the division of labour; and their occupation, being followed professionally, will be executed in the very best style, and on the most scientific principles. Professional talkers will then be engaged for large parties just as singers are now, and will amuse the company with studiously prepared anecdotes, beautifully executed disquisitions, flashes of merriment, repartees, rejoinders, grave remarks, useful hints, and whatever else can conduce to entertain or instruct--whilst hosts and guests will on their part sit at ease in all the luxury of silence.
As to the rules of “good talking” which we began by laying down, we are sensible that in a short time they must become quite obsolete. Conversation is even now as the “last rose of summer,” and going out very fast indeed. If what we have said can be of any use to cheer or improve its declining years, we shall be amply rewarded; but if we are already too late, then let it be kept, and in some twenty years more it may be looked upon as a decided curiosity. “See here what I have found,” may somebody “use the machine” to intimate, for as to speaking so many words together, nobody will do it. “See what I have found in an early number of the Irish Penny Journal--‘Rules for good talking!’--well, now, what could _that_ have been? Dear me, what strange habits they must have had in those days!”