a

than the day. Ye are worthy of all worship; and may he who would pluck one leaf from your laurels, find it clinging to his own forehead, like a burning-iron, imprinting there a brand of indelible disgrace! Blessed be ye, grave Historians, who have lifted the mists of time from the ocean of the past, and revealed it to our eyes, all covered with gallant sails, and strewed, alas! with many a noble wreck !scene replete with tenderest impulses and noblest sympathy. Blessed be ye, sententious Moralists, who have planted buoys along that dangerous coast, to warn us of the rocks and shoals near which our vessels glide. Blessed be ye, above all, sweet Poets, thrice blessed forever, who have thrown the sunshine of your fancies over the stormy waves, and from the fairy islands of enchanted song sent many a summer breeze, more fragrant than the spicy gales of Araby the blest, making old Ocean smile!'

The word book has for me an indescribable charm, a talismanic power. It comes to my ear and heart laden with associations of delight. If ever an unpleasing remembrance be awakened by the name, it is that I have so often forsaken an unfailing friend for the falsehood and folly of the world. Books are the long-sought, longdreamed-of philosopher's stone. They have the quality of transmuting this iron world into gold. When properly used, they give health, youth, and beauty, to our better and abiding part. They are the grand apothecaries' shop for diseased souls. They contain medicaments for every affliction-balm for every wound. The long array of bodily ills, so pathetically recounted by Milton's angel to our weeping progenitor, has throughout its counterparts in the mind. And in the medicine-chest of literature there are cures for all. Has Disappointment cropped the flowers of Hope? Here is Seneca, with many a wholesome restorative whereby thy mind may recover at least its firmness if not its elasticity. Hast thou 'ingorged greedily and without restraint' of the world's unwholesome viands, till thy sated palate yearns for a plainer diet? I will show thee a more healthy regimen; fruits fresh-gathered from the gardens of Hesperus, and goblets crowned with choicest liquor from the sparkling Heliconian fount. Eat; they are delicious as the apples of love, mentioned in the 'Song of Songs which is Solomon's.' Drink; these waters will refresh thy soul, and after them thy sleep shall be airy light, from pure digestion bred.' They will be to thee, after thy long sensual trance, like 'hock and soda-water' to the lip of a waker from a night's debauch.

Ah! how sorrowfully was Byron-hapless lord of the lyre!-mistaken, when he penned the line:

'Man, being reasonable, must get drunk!"

Rather say, man, being reasonable, must drink the pure spirituous wine, the true Falernian, which has grown stronger, and clearer, and mellower, for ages. Champaigne is a bubble, a flash-vapidity, and an aching head. This strengthens while it exalts. The most copious libation produces no crapula, no heart-burn. Here are no lees. This cup will soothe like opium, exhilarate like ether, and purge like hellebore. Has Cupid waved his purple wings above thy couch, shedding sweet and subtle poison on thy slumbers? Here is

6

Ovid, with his 'Ars Amatoria,' to teach thee how to lead the coy nymph a willing captive; or should she prove inexpugnable, here is the Remedia Amoris,' which will enable thee to shake off the fetters which clog thy manhood, and enter into thy soul. Here also are Juvenal, with his sixth satire; and Pope, and Young, who will instruct thee to despise the whole sex-'a consummation,' however, ' devoutly to be' shunned at the bare mention whereof Anacreon shudders, Apollo drops his lyre, and the Muses utter an unmelodious scream. Art thou 'aweary of this great world,' tired of wearing forever the hypocritical mask, of humoring a fickle multitude, and torturing thyself? Here is Zimmerman, whose reflections will make thee affect the life of cloistered sage and thoughtful eremite.' Retire then awhile from the dusty arena, and the noisy rostrum ; not to Bolingbroke's unphilosophic and fretful solitude, but to a quiet loneliness, there to talk awhile with thine own inmost heart, and hold wise communion with the sages of the earth. Art thou, in fine, the victim of ennui, the most fiendish of the demon tribe; sick of the homespun dullness, the 'never-ending, still-beginning' monotony of this daily life? What more sure and pleasant remedy than the dreams of Poetry, and the witcheries of young Romance? Here is Shakspeare, with the rainbow colors of his fancy changing and flashing forever around him. Here is Milton, who will bear thee on soaring wing to a world which himself created, and which will never perish, till the aspiring spirit returns to the God who gave it.

I have rarely been more affected than in reading a description, given by Heyne, I think, of his feelings on first entering a library, replete with the treasures amassed by the prime spirits of all ages. His emotions were almost as overpowering as those of the Jewish lawgiver, when he took off his shoes because he was on holy ground. He was, as it were, in the company of innumerable spirits; the purest essence of their essential' was around him. His was the true spirit of a scholar, who will never open a dusty tome, though rude the print and decayed the binding, without first doing inward homage to the mind which conceived and inhabits it. It seems a species of profanity, to look with irreverent and careless eye on that which cost many a patient vigil, was consecrated by exalted purpose, and bequeathed to posterity, accompanied with fervent hope. If, in the beautiful belief of the Greeks, a dryad was imagined to inhabit every verdant oak, and a nymph to haunt each moss-girt fountain, how much more might we suppose the genius of the author to reside in every book, watching over the destinies of his beloved temple, and regarding with placid or vengeful eye all who approach the consecrated precincts.

Ah! how deceived are you, who deem the book-worm an object of commiseration! Poor worldlings! I care not, though his researches be among the dusty schoolmen; he reaps more real pleasure from those dry and repulsive volumes, than all your fun and frolic, your gold and glitter, can ever bestow on you. Those quips and quiddities have for him a poetic charm; not like your raptures, fluttering and evanescent, but deep and abiding. The labyrinths of technical discussion may seem to you forbidding as the portals of the grave; but to him they are delicious as the Garden of the Sun. While you are

a resi

torturing soul and body to gain the smiles of beauty, and the plaudits of the world, he, no matter how unwisely, is giving peaceful exercise to an immortal mind. I never see an old, patient, unremitting student, without a mixed feeling of wonder, envy, and esteem. seems to be apart from his kind; among them, but not of them.' He He has turned his steps from the crowded walks of life. The din of business thunders not in his ears; the glare of fashion blazes not in his eyes. He has 'renounced the world, the flesh, and the devil,' and lives only in a universe of his own; an ideal creation dence of spirits. Think you he is unhappy? Look through the windows of his study. 'Tis morning. Do you see him bending over that ponderous folio-devouring its pages, his daily, almost his only, food? Look again. 'Tis high noon. ments of the same thin severe lip, and the same eager, though faded See you not still the moveeye? Look yet again. 'Tis midnight. The light of his lamp falls dimly on his meagre face; he pauses, trims it, and again his eyes are attracted and his soul absorbed by that endless combination of letters. And what is their subject? What matter, whether it be the musty lore of the Jewish Talmud, the splendid dreams of Plato, or the dull details of the Byzantine historians? It is sufficient that his are all drawn forth, and his interest all awakened. The clock strikes energies one, strikes two, and 'waning nature warns him to repose.' sleeps, and dreams that he is walking through whispering groves, He conversing with the old philosophers; Plato and Aristotle, Aquinas and Bacon. Or perhaps he fancies that he has shaken off the fetters of sense, and that his intellect has sprung from its supine inertness, to its unbowed, native stature. He wakes to a renewal of toil. But it is no toil to him. It is the one great pleasure of his existence.

Yet

So

It may be said that his enjoyments are selfish and his spirit miserly. I admit that he does not shape his life toward its end - the happiness of mankind in conjunction with his own. great and appropriate he does not purposely pursue a cold-hearted, isolated existence. far as he thinks of mankind at all, he wishes their welfare. He stands in no one's light. He slanders none for his own advantage. He makes no man the stepping-stone for his ambition. He removes no land-marks. He covets not his friend's wife, he seduces not his neighbor's daughter. His solitary pursuits are, at the worst, of but negative injury to society; that is, by the subtraction of his own investment from the general stock of human interests and pleasures.

Leaving it, however, for casuists to decide how far this isolation is reprehensible, I may safely say that he who is resolved to live for himself alone, and enjoy the maximum of private happiness, should by all means pursue the literary walk. The groves of Academus are shaded by greener trees, enamelled with brighter flowers, and watered by purer streams, than any profane haunt in this varied world. If he be blest with the spirit of contentment and economy, here he may find a safe and pleasant refuge from the cares of life. The feverish anxieties, the tumultuous pulsations, the sickening disappointments, that agitate the hearts of others, are unknown to the quiet scholar. No bankruptcy stares him in the face. nance fluctuates not with the changes of the stocks. He lives conHis countetinually on the principal and interest of his wealth; and so far from

20

Soul-Hymn.

diminishing, it increases daily. Each succeeding moment gives him a more sumptuous fare, a richer garniture, a more exhaustless store. Kingdoms may rise, empires may decay; they lessen not the grandeur they take not from the breadth and richness of his of his prospect dominions. His possessions are in the past; they are locked up in the store-house of memory; and there neither moth nor rust can corrupt, nor thieves break through and steal.' He may apply to himself, with double significance, those lines of Dryden, in which he has improved even upon the noble original:

Be fair, or foul, or rain, or shine,

The joys I have possessed, in spite of Fate, are mine:
Not Jove himself upon the past has power,

But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.'

POLYGON.

Soon falls this house of clay,
Should I therefore repine?
Myself cannot decay,
For the I AM is mine.

Forth shall my spirit's light,
When common fate I share,
Like the broad sun at night,
To shed its beams elsewhere.

Strong within me liveth

Through all my outward strife,
This deep faith, which giveth
My quiet inner life.

KNE MI DOLOGY.

KNEMIDOLOGY! ·

- what new thing under the sun is that?' asks the curious reader. Well, I do not know the precise location of the word in Carlyle or Coleridge; the definition is not found in Webster; but thus, were it there, I doubt not it would be given: MIDOLOGY, n., [Greek xvnuis, idos, and loyos.] The Philosophy of

Boots.'

'KNE

This is often said to be an age of utilitarian philosophy, whose allsearching inquisition no power can resist, no particle evade. With equal ease it has analyzed an atom, or unfolded a universe. It has numbered the minutest animalcules in a drop of water, and laughed at their uncouth gambols in the little lake; and it has held glorious converse with myriads of solar systems, and thrilled with the voiceless melody of the morning stars. Surely, then, so broad a mantle may cover the philosophy of boots.

Through every age, the boot has enforced attention as a principal article of dress. The figured sandal found on the musty mummies of most-ancient Egypt; the red and purple cothurnus, in the brilliancy of whose jewels sparkled the wealth of the Roman wearer; the 'light fantastic toes' of our immediate ancestors, that tripped through the mazy minuet; or the exquisitely-finished opera-boot of the present day, whirling along the dizzy dance, or eddying in the wanton waltz, all have been prime-ministers of Vanity.

Chaucer, the first twilight star that sparkled in the constellation of English poets, thus discourseth to the ardent lover on the make and fit of boots:

'Of shoon and bootes new and fair,
Look at the least thou have a pair ;
And that they fit so fetously
That these rude men may utterly
Marvel, sith that they sit so plain,
How they come on and off again.'