grace, such precision, and such a c of expression, as to make them, a truly a marvel of condensed statem Learned Recluses - In secluding much from society, an author is in losing that intimate acquaintance wit is the only sure foundation of powe ter. To form his mind, too, the rec crooks and deforms his body. He much to the Muses, that he has not for an offering to the Graces and Vi dies in preparing to live. Rather what a man knows should find its in what he does. The value of supe edge is chiefly in that it leads to a manhood. writer of good thoughts in bad language *), and Emerson, in the department of prose, and Tennyson and the Brownings in that of verse, been constructed, like Noah's ark, to take in everything. But aside from this, he had, as Hugh Miller wrote of Lamarck, "a trick of dreaming when wide awake, and calling his dreams philosophy." Again: He is interesting to his readers, not so much from what he does say, as from what he is always going to say. Beyond all other writers, he excels in the art of exciting expectation. He entices us on from page to page by magnificent promises of important revelations. He is as Moses to the Israelites. He undertakes to lead us into a land overflowing with milk and honey, but leaves us on the way, though not without regaling us, in the course of our journey, with an abundant supply of heavenly manna. * Carlyle is a sort of Caliban in letters. "He has picked up everything dissonant and thorny in language, out of which he has compounded his vocabulary," says Schlegel of Caliban. And so of Carlyle. The power he exerts over his readers is shown in the circumstance that few of the reviewers of his works have been able to criticise them without more or less falling into his style. But then the imitation ceases with the occasion that gives rise to it—an indication that the impression made by him is after all not lasting. The great qualities of style are simplicity, directness, precision, force, and grace. Of these, Carlyle has but one† Tennyson's poems, however, have this peculiarity, that - force. they disclose more on a second than on a first reading. Full of subtile and elusive graces, each of his poems-and especially his longer ones - has to be understood as a whole before it can be fully appreciated in its parts. Without the commanding simplicity and directness of the greater poets, he is still an exquisite artist, and his inimitable delicacies of phrase and feeling are among the notable things in English literature. constitute a new school in letters school-the leading feature of wh tain pretence of occult and profou They are the soothsayers of literat them, and they put their wise fin learned noses, and tell you, with wave of their goose-quills, "Hush oracle is about to speak!" And th speak, in words dark with inscrutab I say this with reservations as to ea especial reluctance as to Emerson, b lieve, with all his mysticism, that h as much to the common stock of thought as almost any writer now 1 subjects but of a great many more it may observed that they are popular because of them. be Literary Worship-There is a religion not recognized among systems of worship, but none the less real-Shakspeare worship. And not the worst religion either. Among the most cultivated persons, speaking the English tongue, the worship of Shakspeare ranks next to the worship of Truth. And indeed, if I were a woman, I would love no man who did not love Shakspeare next to Truth and myself. Writing and Talking-The art of writing well is much less difficult of acquirement than the sister art of talking well. In the former we have the selection of the subject; we can proceed deliberately, and are guided in its treatment by certain known examples and established principles: but in the latter we are more obliged to take the subject instantly as it comes, to find resources for its treatment in ourselves, and to depend more upon our natural qualities. talker, like the Sultan in Johnson's Irene, "From himself derives his greatness." The ! LITTLE THINGS. WILL not do to despise litt life and great things are LIVING AND DYING. T is easier to die bravely than On this subject I like the re Philip Sidney. "Whether your you," said he, "to live or die, do prince." * If Thomas Noon Talfourd had written ing lines, they alone would have indicated sweetness of character, and a rare elevation To give a cup of water; yet its draught |