La Rochefoucauld.

Smollett.

Montesquieu.

Irving.

cauld could not summon resolution, at his
election, to address the Academy. Al-
though chosen a member, he never en-
tered; for such was his timidity, that he
could not face an audience and pronounce
the usual compliment on his introduction;
he whose courage, whose birth, and whose
genius were alike distinguished. Smollett,
who malignantly criticised Garrick in Rod-
erick Random and Peregrine Pickle, labo-
riously panegyrized him in his History,
telling him in a letter that "he thought it
a duty incumbent on him to make a public
atonement, in a work of truth, for the
wrongs done him in a work of fiction."
is said of Montesquieu that he was so much
affected by the criticisms which he daily
experienced that they contributed to hasten
his death. The public schools of France,
we believe, make use of Irving's Sketch
Book as a text-book in English, yet the
illustrious author confessed his sufferings
from the opinion of a Philadelphia critic,
who, on reviewing The Sketch Book, on its
first appearance, said that Rip Van Winkle
was a silly attempt at humor quite un-
worthy of the author's genius.

It

Lamb said, "He who thought it not SOLITUDE. good for man to be alone preserve me from the more prodigious monstrosity of being never by myself!" Byron said, "All the world are to be at Madame de Staël's to-night, and I am not sorry to escape any part of it. I only go out to get me a fresh appetite for being alone." "In the world," said De Sénancour, "a man lives in his own age; in solitude in all ages." "Conversation," observes Gibbon, "enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius." "Solitude," as Lowell expresses it, "is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome to the character." Wholesome "Solitude," says De Quincey, "though acter. silent as light, is, like light, the mightiest of agencies; for solitude is essential to man. All men come into this world alone; all leave it alone. Even a little child has a dread, whispering consciousness, that if he should be summoned to travel into God's presence, no gentle nurse will be allowed to lead him by the hand, nor mother to carry him in her arms, nor little sister to share his trepidations. King and priest, warrior and maiden, philosopher and child, all must walk those mighty galleries alone. How much this fierce condition of

to the char

ry effect of too much company.

eternal hurry upon an arena too exclusively human in its interests is likely to defeat the grandeur which is latent in all men, The ordina- may be seen in the ordinary effect from living too constantly in varied company. The word dissipation, in one of its uses, expresses that effect; the action of thought and feeling is too much dissipated and squandered. To reconcentrate them into meditative habits, a necessity is felt by all observing persons for sometimes retiring from crowds. No man ever will unfold the capacities of his own intellect who does not at least checker his life with solitude. How much How much solitude, so much power." Late much power. in life, Sydney Smith wrote: "Living a great deal alone (as I now do) will, I believe, correct me of my faults, for a man can do without his own approbation in much society; but he must make great exertions to gain it when he is alone; with-out it, I am convinced, solitude is not to be endured." Klopstock, in his Messiah, expresses it: "Solitude holds a cup sparkling with bliss in her right hand, a raging dagger in her left; to the blest she offers her goblet, but stretches towards the wretch the ruthless steel." Julian Hawthorne, writing of his father, says that not even

solitude, so

Letter.

the author's wife ever saw him in the act of writing. He had to be alone. Years after The Scarlet Letter was published, the The Scarlet author revisited the solitary upper room in which it was written, and entered in his note-book, "In this dismal chamber fame was won." Balzac, when he had thought out one of his philosophical romances, and amassed his materials, retired to his study, and from that time until his book was finished, society saw him no more. When he appeared again among his friends he looked like his own ghost. Lincoln, it is Lincoln. said, had a habit of occasionally spending a whole day by himself in the broad prairie under the blue expanse of heaven, which gave to his face, for a time afterwards, a certain expression of otherworldliness. The only pulpit orator who ever helped me to a conception of the patriarchs and prophets was a circuit-rider who read his Bible in the wilderness. Jesus went up into the mountain alone to pray. Moses Moses. was buried in a lost ravine: "angels were his pall-bearers, and God Almighty dug his grave." No man knoweth his sepulchre unto this day.

STYLE.

Read, says Southey, all the treatises upon composition that ever were composed, and you will find nothing which conveys so much useful instruction as the account given by John Wesley of his own way of writing. "I never think of my style," says he, "but just set down the words that come first. Only when I transcribe anything for the press, then I think it my duty to see that every phrase be clear, pure, and proper conciseness, which is now as it were natural to me, brings quantum sufficit of strength. If after all I observe any stiff expression, I throw it out, neck and shoulders." "The ultimate rule is," said Carlyle: "learn so far as possible to be intelligible and transparent - no notice taken of your style, but solely of what you express by it." "Remember," says CowPerspicuity per, "that, in writing, perspicuity is always half the bat- more than half the battle. The want of it is the ruin of more than half the poetry that is published. A meaning that does not stare you in the face is as bad as no meaning, because nobody will take the pains to poke for it." "Clear writers, like clear fountains," wrote Landor, "do not seem so deep as they are: the turbid look the most profound." "In composing, as a

more than

tle.