proprietor on witnessing the sudden disappearance of his treasure. His internal experiences are suddenly reversed. He becomes deeply sensible of the vanity of all sublunary things, and would fain flee away and be at rest. He sighs -"for a lodge in some vast wilderness, where he may indulge in dejected reverie. He becomes misanthropic. He shrinks from an encounter with his fellow men, especially his tailor. He becomes crest-fallen. In fine, he is the picture of desolation. But his cry is Tin! and its influence as a remedial agent becomes manifest. Another important influence, though indirect in its character, is that which it exerts through the individual upon a third party. We do not intend, reader, to hold forth on the part which tin acts in matrimonial and ante-matrimonial relations, but are content merely to suggest the topic, and leave you to ponder the strong language of the Poet, WHEN the Gascon French say rapapelloter, they mean to turn over the leaves of a book rapidly, and by rapapelloteur, they mean one who loves to twirl the leaves of many books. We have no word to express this in English, for "bookworm" has too much of the plodding character about it. "Helluo librorum," as the Latins used to call the biblionianiac, is open to the same objection. Meister Carl calls such an one a lifrelofre, a word which I shrewdly suspect to have been coined by his own fertile brain; it means a book-loafer, one who takes much pleasure in the mere being with books, in the examining of title pages, privilegia, and colophons, and in the lection of odd and useless authors. Your lifrelofre is not a pedant, for he, of all men, is best aware of the difference between the little we know and the much there is to know. He has learned enough on every subject to discover he knows nothing of any. He is a lover of antiquity, for he has found that half the wit, half the fancy, ay, and half the wisdom of to-day, has been said already, and said better, a thousand years ago. He delights to have a smattering of many tongues and sciences, but often knows none thoroughly. He is critical in little things, sometimes not so in greater matters, thinks words of as much importance as dollars, will discourse eruditely on original sin and the same day be cheated by his grocer, dotes more on parchment folios than parchment deeds, and prefers making notes to shaving them. His chiefest happiness is to come across a forgotten work, by an unknown author, in an outlandish tongue. This he will read with care, will show exultingly to his brother loafers, and will prize it in proportion to its uselessness and rarity. He is not ambitious, for, in the dusty nooks of alcoves, and lost on unregarded shelves, he knows there sink into oblivion more and greater authors, than any that now tread the earth, vainly hoping that coming ages will hold up their hands in astonishment at the men of this time. “Who,” he will ask you, opening the work of that Prince of Lifrelofres, Burton, "who is familiar with one quarter of the names that this book quotes? Yet all lived, breathed and wrote, all thought themselves wise and learned, all yearned and strove for posthumous fame. Learn that millions are forgotten where one is remembered, and that strong must be the rock, tall the edifice of intellect that the ocean of oblivion does not engulf. Budaeus and Scalliger are known no more among us, the builder of Cholula achieved his work but not his will, and Cheops himself exists but as a doubt. Men are too much wrapt up in the novelties of to-day to care for the trite things of yesterday, too devoted to the perpetuation of their own fame to cherish that of their predecessors." The idea of the lifrelofre, on this subject, is worth considering. He points you out the Biographie Universelle. Half a page in that, he tells you, is the most you can expect, and adds, with quaint Sir Thomas Browne, "who cares to subsist like Hippocrates' patients, or like Achilles' horses in Homer, under naked nominations, without deserts and noble acts?" Yet I recall one man who did wish to be remembered just so,— that physician, alchemist, poet, philosopher, mathematician, metaphysician, what not, Jerome Cardan, who lived in the sixteenth century, and who hesitated not to say, 66 Cuperem notum esse quod sim, non opto ut sciatur qualis sim." So he wrote his Vita Propria, detailing accurately the most secret springs of his actions, not concealing even his basest deeds, knowing well that the most efficacious mode to deceive men is to tell them the plain truth. So all writers agree in calling him a madman, none going down into the depths of their own souls, and learning from it to appreciate that of another. If his autobiography be true, say they, then all the monsters of wickedness that Shelley ever portrayed or Schiller dreamed, are good and virtuous men compared to him. They do not consider how, in the light of a peculiar philosophy, a deeply earnest and meditative man finds in base selfishness the motives of his best actions; they forget how some men love to depreciate their own excellencies as Rousseau hided his noblest deeds, and Dr. Johnson styled the lexicographer "the slave of science, the drudge of learning and genius." They should bear in mind how many sorrows Cardan suffered, how dark and strange was his vast intellect, in which, as in some misty gloaming, the doctrines of the Cabbala and the reveries of occult philosophy exorcised monstrous phantasms and hideous spectra; how he existed in scenes of fearful vice and terror from his birth, nay, from his conception till his death. Melancholy is a characteristic of genius, even in its most prosperous condition, and this combined with continual griefs and reverses could not but increase and lastingly fix its sombre tints on this susceptible nature. Michael Nostradamus tells us that when he burned the alchemical books, a weird and ghastly light diffused itself throughout his house, typifying by this the effect the perusal of them had on his mind. What wonder, then, that the hypochondriacal genius of Cardan, who had devoted so much of his time to such studies, came at last to see nought in his purest deeds but the subtle inspiration of his peculiar demon? "Je forme une enterprise, qui n'eut jamais d'exemple," are the words with which Rousseau commences his Confessions. Perhaps when the trump of the last judgment shall sound abroad to awaken the quick and the dead, two men, both prior to Rosseau, will come forth, claiming that they, also, have confessed to the world, telling the truth in accordance with the light they had, concealing nothing bad, adding nothing good,Aurelius Augustinus, and Jerome Cardan. What an instructive parallelism could be written of the confessions of these three men? St. Augustine, living in the setting glory of ancient Rome, Cardan, in the restless dawn of modern civilization, Rousseau, moving in the polished circles of the Court of Louis XV; the first, the stern father of the early Church, the second, the groping student of Cabbalistic mysticism, the third, the most earnest theist of his age; all three of far-reaching intellect, overflowing with creative genius, and abounding with strong enthusiasm. Yet how diverse the motives that actuated them. St. Augustine chose posterity as his father confessor; Cardan was influenced by a morbid impulse; Rousseau wrote to explain himself and benefit mankind. Soundly studied, they would tell us more of the lives of great men than the reading of a hundred memoirs. Most men, however, do not consider the perusal of these works so beneficial. Each of these, they tell us, was at some or all periods of his life uncommonly wicked, more so, indeed, than the majority of mankind. I do not believe this; they are only too generally applicable, thus conflicting with the modern discovery that a low opinion of human nature is a false one; we are in no wise pleased to be told how bad we are. "A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure," says the crafty Lord of Verulam, and a wise and politic writer will always depict human nature better than he finds it. . When Machiavelli, by a long and careful study of antecedents, had elaborated and published a series of perfectly true, and, if well carried out, successful rules for obtaining and preserving regal power, the whole of Europe was thrown into an uproar by the unparalelled immorality of the man, yet, prohibit and burn, theorize and deny as they would, example after example established, and still does establish, the verity of his maxims. So in modern times it is fashionable to cry out against Thackeray for his low opinion of men and women. But, reader, have you or I, in our wanderings to and fro, through this Vanity Fair we live in, ever met a Little Dorrit or an Esther Summerfield? As for me, I am grieved to say, I have not, nor do I expect to. I have met Pendennis and George Osborne, and several members of that most respectable family, the Newcomes; moreover,—a word in your ear,-when I meet with an Amelia Sedley, I am not going to seek further and fare worse, but intend marrying her as soon as possible, and advise you not to go on hunting for one nearer an angel. But where have I got to? By no manner of means, when I begun, did I intend to give you any advice on marriage, which has already been treated of in this Number, but merely to sketch you the character of a lifrelofre, then to loaf, with you at my elbow, through a herd of old authors who treat of the condition of students at the Universities of Europe during the middle ages, not in a statistical or borous way at all, but having a joke wherever we can, knowing that we can be merry and wise at once, and finally showing cause whereby we should rejoice and be exceeding glad that we are not of that age. A very pretty scheme, the failure of which I owe to Laurence Sterne's advice, "always write one sentence, trusting to Almighty God for the next." However, next time, if there should turn out to be a next, we will fetter ourselves down to one thing, and not be led astray by any saint or devil whatsoever. D. G. B. The Faithful Student Unsafe. "There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is buried in shallows, and in miseries." EVERY man, however noble his purpose, or exalted his sphere, is in danger. From his pathway branch off a thousand bye paths, many of them so nearly parallel to the true course, that human foresight cannot see but they do reach the same terminus. When young, a man expects to arrive at some favorite goal, but when old, looking back over the crooked course of his existence, he wonders that he has not irrecoverably fallen a thousand times. The name of a man's foes is Legion. Constant vigilance and active endeavor are only a partial safeguard against them. There are perils for others than the immoral, dissipated and base. Error, robed in the garb of Truth, is eager to lead even the good man to trust a lie, and the line of demarcation between right and wrong is often so dim that he hardly knows whether he stands on the territory of Innocence, or of Crime. Let no man be confident of his safety, or boast that he is right, lest he display the characteristic, earn the reputation, and deservedly meet the end of a fool. Not even in the discharge of what we think our duty, are we safe. It was when Bunyan's hero was pursuing his way directly from the palace Beautiful to the Celestial City, that Appollyon met him with curses and arrows of fire. Verily, in his transit through the world, every man is as the Pilgrim in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. His path is narrow. On his right hand is a deep ditch, into which the blind have always led the blind; on his left is a "dangerous quag," without bottom to stand on; hob-goblins, satyrs and dragons assail him on every side, and over all, ever "hang the discouraging clouds of confusion." Among men the student's liabilities are not the least various, subtle and fearful. Notwithstanding its apparent quietude, the characteristic of his life is intensity. His faculties are ever awake. He is always traveling one road or another rapidly. If he mistake his way, he approaches disaster with fearful velocity. But for the present we shall notice only a few of those perils which peculiarly beset the faithful student, and which arise from that one excellence,-faithfulness. In the first place, in the hot pursuit after knowledge and self-improve |