Methinks I see, as thrown from her high sphere, With rubbish mixed, and glittering in the dust." Who does not cherish with a loving reverence the household names of Cowper and Wordsworth, of Milton and Montgomery, for the exalted morality they teach, and which so beautifies their muse ? But it must ever be otherwise, where this element is wanting, as, to some extent, in the instances of Moore, Shelley, Keats, Byron and Burns. They may all illustrate truth; but the graces and enchantments of virtue are both pleasurable and profitable to portray and gaze upon, while its opposite must entail manifold evils. We close our desultory chapter with Carlyle's admirable portraiture of the literary character-its lights and shadows delicately blended: "If to know wisdom," he remarks, "were to practise it; if fame brought true dignity and peace of mind, or happiness consisted in nourishing the intellect with its appropriate food, and surrounding the imagination with ideal beauty, a literary life would be the most enviable which the lot of this world affords. But the truth is far otherwise. The man of letters has no immutable, all-conquering volition, more than other men; to understand and to perform, are two very different things with him, as with every one. His fame rarely exerts a favorable influence on his dignity of character, and never on his peace of mind; its glitter is external for the eyes of others, within it is the aliment of unrest, the oil cast upon the ever-gnawing fire of ambition, quickening into fresh vehemence the blaze which it stills for a moment. Talent, of any sort, is generally accompanied with a peculiar fineness of sensibility; of genius, this is the most essential constituent; and life in any shape has sorrows enough for hearts so formed. The employments of literature sharpen this natural tendency; the vexations that accompany them frequently exasperate it into morbid soreness. The cares and toils of literature are the business of life; its delights are too ethereal and too transient to furnish that perennial flow of satisfaction-coarse, but plenteous and substantial—of which happiness, in this world of ours, is made. The most finished efforts of the mind give it little pleasure; frequently they give it pain, for men's aims are ever far beyond their strength. And the outward recompense of these undertakings, the obstruction they confer, is of still smaller value; the desire for it is insatiable, even when successful, and when baffled, it issues in jealousy and envy, and every pitiful and painful feeling. So pure a temperament, with so little to restrain or satisfy, so much to distress or tempt it, produces contradictions which few are adequate to reconcile. Hence, the unhappiness of literary men; hence, their faults and foibles." YOUTH AND AGE. Life is a voyage, in the progress of which we are perpetually changing We first leave childhood behind us, then youth, then the years of ripened manhood, then the better and more pleasing part of old age. our scenes. SENECA. 66 HOPE writes the poetry of the boy," it has been وو beautifully said, "but memory that of the man.' The cup of life is sweetest at the brim, the flavor is impaired as we drink deeper, and the dregs are made bitter that we may suffer the less regret when it is taken from our lips. Ford Clarendon rightly estimated life, when he said: "They who are most weary of life, and yet are most unwilling to die, are such as have lived to no purpose; who have rather breathed than lived." "We live in deeds, not years-in thoughts, not breaths, In feelings, not in figures on the dial; We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives Lord Bacon has given us the same thought, yet * Bailey. 76 more tersely: "A man that is young in years,” he said, "may be old in hours, if he have lost no time." "O gentlemen! the time of life is short; To spend that shortness basely, were too long, Still ending at th' arrival of an hour."* Poets, sages, and moralists have portrayed life by curious allegories and metaphors-all suggestive of its illusions and its brevity. The German artist, Retzsch, has pictured it by a game of chess, with good and evil genii hovering over the players. "There are two angels that attend unseen His volume, and ascends with it to God; The other keeps his dreadful day-book open Till sunset, that we may repent; which doing, The record of action fades away, And leaves a line of white across the page." Human life has been compared to a book; at each end of which there is a blank leaf-infancy and old age. A modern humoristt looks at life in a different aspect. He says: "Life is a farce made up of a great number of ridiculous acts. So say the old and the cynical, when their performance approaches the epilogue, and the curtain. is rung down by the prompter Time. "Life is only a dream, in which it is very necessary to keep one's eyes open. "Life is a continual struggle after that which we cannot take with us, riches; which seem given to us, as the nurse gives the child a pretty ornament or shell, from the mantelpiece, to keep it quiet until it falls asleep, when it drops from its helpless hands, and is replaced, to please other babies in their turn. "Life is a thing which most people seem in a great hurry to get rid of, if we may judge by the number of fast people now-a-days, who use themselves up, with the greatest apparent self-satisfaction. "Life is a pleasant piece of self-deceit, where we always lay our faults upon the shoulders of others, and positively consider ourselves the injured parties. If this fact could be more generally acknowledged, how little cause should we have for courts of law, where the weak-minded congregate to pay dearly for the judg ment of others, because they have none of their own. "Life for one, is a subscription from many, for, from the smallest to the largest created, the death of others is necessary to their lives. "Life is a voyage, upon which we too often foolishly allow others to guide the helm, and are shipwrecked accordingly. "The sum of life is one of most difficult arithmetic, in which we all figure away; full of false calculations and mistakes, which we only find out, when we go to strike the balance, and blush to own ourselves obliged to put down errors excepted.' "Life is one long bill, which we accept, and are con |