Vanity Fair - A Novel Without a Hero #254853

A man with a reflective turn Of mind, walking through an exhibition of this sort, will not be Oppressed, I take it, by his own or other people's hilarity. An episode of humor or kindness touches and amuses him here and there; a pretty child looking at a gingerbread stall; a pretty girl blushing whilst her lover talks to her and chooses her fairing; poor Tom Fool, yonder behind the wagon, mumbling his bone with the honest family which lives by his tumbling; but the general impression is one more melancholy than mirthful. When you come home, you sit down, in a sober, contemplative, not uncharitable frame of mind, and apply yieurself to your books or your business.