text: " The colonel merely smiled which seemed an effort for his cloistered physiognomy; the duke laughed and began a general conversation upon all possible topics--England forming the chief; the royal family--the court--the theatres--parliament--the people--all whirled over with the ease and rapidity of one turning the leaves of an album; here a verse and there a portrait--here a sketch of a temple and there an outline of a cottage--the whole pretty and as trifling as pretty and cast aside at the first moment when any thing better worth thinking of occurred