diffused rays of wit and learning in authors, so as to make them point with warmth and quickness upon the reader's imagination. Furthermore, hath not D'Israeli, Montaigne and Southey, with Bacon, Burton, and others of illustrious memory thus indulged their vagrant fancy, and gratified their readers thereby? In like manner, albeit very imperfectly, have I essayed to garner up these "gleaned thoughts of wise spirits," which have been gained from "almost every latitude and longitude, and sometimes from the opposite poles of thought."

I have somewhere read that that writer doth the most good who giveth his reader the most knowledge, and taketh from him the least time: and certes in this degenerate age of unfruitful reading, it may not be deemed an act of great temerity, modestly to present something that shall savor of the utile et dulce. Perchance it may repel the weak; it will arouse and attract the stronger, and increase their strength by making them exert it. "In the sweat of the brow, is the mind, as well as the body, to cat its bread."* Worthy Montaigne hath quaintly compared his book to “a thread that binds together the flowers of others, and that by incessantly pouring the waters of a few good old authors into his sieve, some drops fall upon his paper." I, forsooth, have sought to emulate his industry in garnering up

*Guesses at Truth.

"Some odds and ends,

With homely truths, too trite to be sublime;
And many a moral scattered here and there--
Not very new, nor yet the worse for wear."

In fine, the following pages comprise the selections, excerpts, pleasant passages, pencillings, jottings-down, and occasional memoranda of much miscellaneous reading; the pleasure-toils of leisure intervals snatched from the hours devoted to the sterner duties of life. They may seem desultory chapters; if so, they may suit desultory readers; and if thou art of that order, so much the better both for thyself, and—the book.

"Brevity in writing," according to the modern clerical wit,* "is what charity is to all other virtues-righteousness is nothing without the one, nor authorship without the other."

"A verse may find him who a sermon flies,

And turn delight into a sacrifice."

It hath been my endeavor to infuse into these pages as much of the cayenne of quaint conceit, and the Attic salt of wit, with the more solid elements of ancient lore and philosophic acumen as might comport with true taste; believing with our modern humorist,† that a "single burst of mirth is worth a whole season full of cries, with melancholy." Pri'thee, then, bring with thee a mirthful spirit, and then fall on to what hath

*Sydney Smith.

+ Hood.

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been spread before thee. Mayhap, thou wilt catch, while these gladsome, though motley pages pass under thine eye, somewhat of their " sweet infection." "A cheerful philosophy is the best in all seasons, especially in dull weather, since it beguiles one of its gloom." Old Sir Thomas Overbury hath quaintly remarked: "Wit is brushwood-judgment, timber; the one giveth the greatest flame, the other yieldeth the durablest heat, and both meeting make the best fire." If, in olden times, quirks and quips, and jokes and jibes were often indulged at the expense of modest wisdom; an attempt to combine their good essence, would, methinks, scarce demand apology. What follows, then, hath been hunted up, brushed up, and picked up-from heaps of rubbish, from old books and new books, some covered with the dust and cobwebs of literary catacombs—some decked with the modern adornments of art and skill-some grave, some gay-but all possessing something quaint, pungent or picturesque. This tome, which I now, in good faith, commend to thy candor, might have been spun out to much greater extent, did I not agree with a good old divine,* that " a little plot of ground thick sown, is better than a great field, which for the most part of it, lies fallow ;" and with a modern writer,† that “ a book should be luminous, but not voluminous." If, peradventure, these my gleanings from the fertile fields of literature fail to

* Norris, of Bemerton.

+ C. N. Bovee.

add anything to thy well-instructed knowledge, they yet may refresh thy well-stored remembrance, and if either, I have my end, and thou hast my endeavor. Finally, "If in any case these my poore labors may be found instrumental to weede out blacke melancholie, carking cares, harte-griefe from the minde-sed hoc magis volo quam expecto-Goe forth, childe of my brain-sweat: here I give him up to you, even doe with him what you please, my masters. Some I suppose, will applaud, commende, cry him up-(these are my friendes ;) others, again, will blame, hisse, reprehende in many things, cry down altogether my collections, for crude, inept, putid; they may call me singular, a pedant, fantastic-— wordes of reproache in this age, which is all too neoterick and light for my humor."*

Thy friend and servant,

Fred. Saunders.

* Burton.

MOSAICS.

AN

AUTHOR-CRAFT.

Authors are beings only half of earth-
They own a world apart from other men;
A glorious realm, given by their fancy birth;
Subjects, a sceptre, and a diadem;

A fairy land of thought in which sweet bliss

Would run to ecstasy in wild delight-
But that stern Nature drags them back to this

With call imperious, which they may not slight;
And then they traffic with their thoughts-to live,
And coin their laboring brains for daily bread,
Getting scant dross for the rich ore they give,

While often with the gift their life is shed.
And thus they die, leaving behind a name
At once their country's glory and her shame.

FRED. WEST.

N author has been compared to asparagus, on the supposition that all that is good about him is his head. We venture to protest against such a definition, on the plea that also to be ascribed to his heart.

much of his value is

It is indeed the latter

quality which gives to the realm of authorship, its

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