stretch, in large characters, from one end of the chart to the other. These, like the overlargely lettered signs and placards of the street, escape observation by dint of being excessively obvious; and here the physical oversight is precisely analogous with the moral inapprehension by which the intellect suffers to pass unnoticed those considerations which are too ob upon the premises. I felt also that the whole train of thought, which I was at some pains in detailing to you just now, concerning the invariable principle of policial action in searches for articles concealed-I felt that this whole train of thought would necessarily pass through the mind of the minister. It would imperatively lead him to despise all the ordinary nooks of concealment. He could not, I re-trusively and too palpably self-evident. But flected, be so weak as not to see that the most intricate and remote recess of his hotel would be as open as his commonest closets to the eyes, to the probes, to the gimlets, and to the microscopes of the prefect. I saw, in fine, that he would be driven, as a matter of course, to simplicity, if not deliberately induced to it as a matter of choice. You will remember, perhaps, how desperately the prefect laughed when I suggested, upon our first interview, that it was just possible this mystery troubled him so much on account of its being so very self-evident." "Yes," said I, "I remember his merriment well. I really thought he would have fallen into convulsions." this is a point, it appears, somewhat above or beneath the understanding of the prefect. He never once thought it probable, or possible, that the minister had deposited the letter immediately beneath the nose of the whole world by way of best preventing any portion of that world from perceiving it." "But the more I reflected upon the daring, dashing, and discriminating ingenuity of D--; upon the fact that the document must have always been at hand, if he intended to use it to good purpose; and upon the decisive evidence, obtained by the prefect, that it was not hidden within the limits of that dignitary's ordinary search-the more satisfied I became that, to conceal this letter, the minister had resorted to the comprehensive and sagacious expedient of not attempting to conceal it at all. "Full of these ideas, I prepared myself with a pair of green spectacles, and called one fine morning, quite by accident, at the ministerial hotel. I found D-- at home, yawning, lounging, and dawdling, as usual, and pretend perhaps, the most really energetic human being now alive-but that is only when nobody sees him. "The material world," continued Dupin, "abounds with very strict analogies to the immaterial; and thus some colour of truth has been given to the rhetorical dogma, that metaphor or simile may be made to strengthen an argument as well as to embellish a description. The principle of the vis inertia, for example, seems to be identical in physics and meta-ing to be in the last extremity of ennui. He is, physics. It is not more true in the former that a large body is with more difficulty set in motion than a smaller one, and that its subsequent momentum is commensurate with this difficulty, than it is in the latter, that intellects of the vaster capacity, while more forcible, more constant, and more eventful in their movements than those of inferior grade, are yet the less readily moved, and more embarrassed and full of hesitation in the first few steps of their progress. Again: have you ever noticed which of the street signs, over the shop-doors, are the most attractive of attention?" "I have never given the matter a thought," I said. "There is a game of puzzles," he resumed, "which is played upon a map. One party playing requires another to find a given word -the name of town, river, state, or empireany word, in short, upon the motley and perplexed surface of the chart. A novice in the game generally seeks to embarrass his opponents by giving them the most minutely lettered names; but the adept selects such words as "To be even with him, I complained of my weak eyes, and lamented the necessity of the spectacles, under cover of which I cautiously and thoroughly surveyed the whole apartment, while seemingly intent only upon the conversation of my host. "I paid especial attention to a large writingtable near which he sat, and upon which lay confusedly some miscellaneous letters and other papers, with one or two musical instruments, and a few books. Here, however, after a long and very deliberate scrutiny, I saw nothing to excite particular suspicion. "At length my eyes, in going the circuit of the room, fell upon a trumpery filagree cardrack of pasteboard that hung dangling by a dirty blue ribbon from a little brass knob just beneath the middle of the mantelpiece. In this rack, which had three or four compartments, were five or six visiting cards and a solitary letter. This last was much soiled and crumpled. It was torn nearly in two, across the middle, as if a design, in the first instance, to tear it entirely up as worthless, had been altered, or stayed in the second. It had a large black seal, bearing the D- cipher very conspicuously, and was addressed, in a diminutive female hand, to D, the minister himself. It was thrust carelessly, and even, as it seemed, contemptuously, into one of the uppermost divisions of the rack. "No sooner had I glanced at this letter than I concluded it to be that of which I was in search. To be sure it was, to all appearance, radically different from the one of which the prefect had read us so minute a description. | Here the seal was large and black, with the D- cipher; there it was small and red, with the ducal arms of the S- family. Here, the address to the minister was diminutive and feminine; there the superscription, to a certain royal personage, was markedly bold and decided; the size alone formed a point of correspondence. But, then, the radicalness of these differences, which was excessive; the dirt; the soiled and torn condition of the paper; so inconsistent with the true methodical habits of D, and so suggestive of a design to delude the beholder into an idea of the worthlessness of the document; these things, together with the hyper-obtrusive situation of this document, full in the view of every visitor, and thus exactly in accordance with the conclusions to which I had previously arrivedthese things, I say, were strongly corroborative of suspicion, in one who came with the intention to suspect. "I protracted my visit as long as possible, and, while I maintained a most animated discussion with the minister upon a topic which I knew well had never failed to interest and excite him, I kept my attention really rivetted upon the letter. In this examination I committed to memory its external appearance and arrangement in the rack; and also fell, at length, upon a discovery which set at rest whatever trivial doubt I might have entertained. In scrutinizing the edges of the paper I observed them to be more chafed than seemed necessary. They presented the broken appearance which is manifested when a stiff paper, having been once folded and pressed with a folder, is refolded in a reverse direction, in the same creases or edges which had formed the original fold. This discovery was sufficient. It was clear to me that the letter had been turned, as a glove, inside out, redirected, and re-sealed. I bade the minister good morning, and took my departure at once, leaving a gold snuff-box upon the table. "The next morning I called for the snuffbox, when we resumed, quite eagerly, the conversation of the preceding day. While thus engaged, however, a loud report, as if of a pistol, was heard immediately beneath the windows of the hotel, and was succeeded by a series of fearful screams, and the shoutings of a terrified mob. D- rushed to a casement, threw it open, and looked out. In the meantime I stepped to the card-rack, took the letter, put it in my pocket, and replaced it by a fac-simile (so far as regards externals), which I had carefully prepared at my lodgings-imitating the D- cipher very readily by means of a seal formed of bread. "The disturbance in the street had been occasioned by the frantic behaviour of a man with a musket. He had fired it among a crowd of women and children. It proved, however, to have been without ball, and the fellow was suffered to go his way as a lunatic or a drunkard. When he had gone D- - came from the window, whither I had followed him immediately upon securing the object in view. Soon afterwards I bade him farewell. The pretended lunatic was a man in my own pay." "But what purpose had you," I asked, "in replacing the letter by a fac-simile? Would it not have been better at the first visit to have seized it openly and departed?" “D——,” replied Dupin, "is a desperate man, and a man of nerve. His hotel, too, is not without attendants devoted to his interests. Had I made the wild attempt you suggest I might never have left the ministerial presence alive. The good people of Paris might have heard of me no more. But I had an object, apart from these considerations. You know my political prepossessions. In this matter I act as a partisan of the lady concerned. For eighteen months the minister has had her in his power. She has now him in hers—since, being unaware that the letter is not in his possession, he will proceed with his exactions as if it was. Thus will he inevitably commit himself at once to his political destruction. His downfall, too, will not be more precipitate than awkward. It is all very well to talk about the facilis descensus Averni; but in all kinds of climbing, as Catalini said of singing, it is far more easy to get up than to come down. In the present instance I have no sympathyat least no pity-for him who descends. He is that monstrum horrendum-an unprincipled man of genius. I confess, however, that I should like very well to know the precise character of his thoughts, when, being defied by her whom the prefect terms 'a certain per sonage,' he is reduced to opening the letter which I left for him in the card-rack." "How? Did you put anything particular in it?" "Why? It did not seem altogether right to leave the interior blank-that would have been insulting. D-, at Vienna once, did me an evil turn, which I told him, quite good-humouredly, that I should remember. So, as I knew he would feel some curiosity in regard to the identity of the person who had outwitted him, I thought it a pity not to give him a clue. He is well acquainted with my MS., and I just copied into the middle of the blanksheet the words 'So dire a project Is worthy of Thyestes, if not of Atreus,' They are to be found in Crébillon's Atrée." EPICUREAN PHILOSOPHY. Lack we motives to laugh? Are not all things, any thing, every thing, to be laughed at? And if nothing were to be seen, felt, heard, or understood, we would laugh at it too!-Merry Beggars. There's nothing here on earth deserves Half of the thought we waste about it, And thinking but destroys the nerves, When we could do so well without it: If folks would let the world go round, And pay their tithes, and eat their dinners, Such doleful looks would not be found To frighten us poor laughing sinners: Never sigh when you can sing, One plagues himself about the sun, And puzzles on, through every weather, What time he'll rise,-how long he'll run,And when he'll leave us altogether: Now matters it a pebble-stone Whether he shines at six or seven? If they don't leave the sun alone, At last they'll plague him out of heaven! Never sigh when you can sing, But laugh, like me, at every thing! Another spins from out his brains Fine cobwebs, to amuse his neighbours, And gets, for all his toils and pains, Reviewed and laughed at for his labours, Fame is his star! and fame is sweet; And praise is pleasanter than honey,VOL II. I write at just so much a sheet, And Messrs. Longman pay the money! Never sigh when you can sing, But laugh, like me, at every thing! My brother gave his heart away To Mercandotti, when he met her, She married Mr. Ball one day He's gone to Sweden to forget her! I had a charmer too-and sighed, And raved all day and night about her, She caught a cold, poor thing! and died, And I-am just as fat without her! Never sigh when you can sing, But laugh, like me, at every thing! For tears are vastly pretty things, But make one very thin and taper; And sighs are music's sweetest strings, But sound most beautiful- -on paper! "Thought" is the sage's brightest star, Her gems alone are worth his finding; But as I'm not particular, Please God, I'll keep on "never-minding." Never sigh when you can sing, But laugh, like me, at every thing! Oh! in this troubled world of ours, Is half a pain and half a pleasure: There's nothing half so good as laughing! Never sigh when you can sing, But laugh, like me, at every thing! G. M. FITZGERALD. TO LUCASTA (ON GOING TO THE WARS). Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind, That, from the nunnerie Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind, True; a new mistress now I chase- Yet this inconstancy is such As you too shall adore; I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not honour more. RICHARD LOVELACE. Lucasta was a Miss Lucy Sacheverel, who married another lover, believing Lovelace dead. He was born 1618, died 1658. GENIUS, TALENT, SENSE, AND CLEVERNESS. BY S. T. COLERIDGE. The first of these words I use in the sense of most general acceptance, as the faculty which adds to the existing stock of power and knowledge, by new views, new combinations, &c. In short, I define GENIUS as originality in intellectual construction, the moral accompaniment and actuating principle of which consists, perhaps, in carrying on the freshness and feelings of childhood into the powers of manhood. By TALENT, on the other hand, I mean the comparative facility of acquiring, arranging, and applying the stock furnished by others, and already existing in books or other conservatories of intellect. By SENSE I understand that just balance of the faculties which is to the judgment what health is to the body. The mind seems to act en masse, by a synthetic, rather than an analytic process; even as the outward senses, from which the metaphor is taken, perceive immediately, each as it were by a peculiar tact or intuition, without any consciousness of the mechanism by which the perception is realized. This is often exemplified in well-bred, unaffected, and innocent women. I know a lady on whose judgment, from constant experience of its rectitude, I could rely almost as on an oracle. But when she has sometimes proceeded to a detail of the grounds and reasons for her opinions-then, led by similar experience, I have been tempted to interrupt her with, "I will take your advice;" or "I shall act on your opinion; for I am sure you are in the right. But as to the fors and becauses, leave them to me to find out." The general accompaniment of SENSE is a disposition to avoid extremes, whether in theory or in practice, with a desire to remain in sympathy with the general mind of the age or country, and a feeling of the necessity and utility of compromise. If Genius be the initiative, and Talent be the administrative, Sense is the conservative branch, in the intellectual republic. By CLEVERNESS (which I dare not with Dr. Johnson call a low word, while there is a sense to be expressed which it alone expresses) I mean a comparative readiness in the invention and use of means, for the realizing of objects and ideas often of ideas which the man of genius only could have originated, and which the clever man perhaps neither fully comprehends nor adequately appreciates, even at the moment that he is prompting or executing the machinery of their accomplishment. In short, Cleverness is a sort of genius for instrumentality. It is the brain in the hand. In literature, Cleverness is more frequently accompanied by wit-Genius and Sense by humour. If I take the three great countries of Europe, in respect of intellectual character-namely, Germany, England, and France, I should characterize them thus,-premising only that in the first word of the two first tables I mean to imply that Genius, rare in all countries, is equal in both of these, the instances equally numerous and characteristic therefore not in relation to each other, but in relation to the third country. The other qualities are more general characteristics. GERMANY, Genius, Talent, Fancy. The latter chiefly as exhibited in wild combinations, and in pomp of ornament. N. B. Imagination is implied in Genius. ENGLAND, Genius, Sense, Humour. So again, with regard to the forms and effects in which the qualities manifest themselves, i.e. intellectually. SHAKSPEARE. It is Shakspeare's peculiar excellence, that throughout the whole of his splendid picturegallery (the reader will excuse the confessed inadequacy of this metaphor) we find individuality everywhere, mere portrait nowhere. In all his various characters we still feel ourselves communing with the same human nature, which is everywhere present as the vegetable sap in the branches, sprays, leaves, buds, blossoms, and fruits,-their shapes, tastes, and odours.. CRITICISM. As soon as a critic betrays that he knows more of his author than the author's publications could have told him;-as soon as from this more intimate knowledge, elsewhere obtained, he avails himself of the slightest trait against the author, his censure immediately becomes personal injury—his sarcasms personal insults. He ceases to be a CRITIC, and takes on him the most contemptible character to which a rational creature can be degradedthat of a gossip, backbiter, and pasquilant; but with this heavy aggravation, that he steals with the unquiet, the deforming passions of the world, into the museum; into the very place which, next to the chapel and oratory, should be our sanctuary, and secure place of refuge; offers abominations on the altar of the Muses, and makes its sacred paling the very circle in which he conjures up the lying and profane spirit. MODERN SATIRISTS. ADVICE TO LITERARY ASPIRANTS. With no other privilege than that of sympathy and sincere good wishes, I would address an affectionate exhortation to youthful literati, grounded on my own experience. It will be but short, for the beginning, middle, and end converge to one charge: never pursue literature as a trade. With the exception of one extraordinary man, I have never known an individual, least of all an individual of genius, healthy or happy without a profession, i.e. some regular employment which does not depend on the will of the moment; and which can be carried on so far mechanically, that an average quantum only of health, spirits, and intellectual exertion are requisite to its faithful discharge. Three hours of leisure, unan In this age of personality—this age of literary and political gossiping, the meanest insects are worshipped with a sort of Egyptian superstition, if only the brainless head be atoned for by the sting of personal malignity in the tail. The most vapid satires have become the objects of a keen public interest, purely from the number of contemporary characters named in the patchwork notes (which possess, how-noyed by an alien anxiety, and looked forward ever, the comparative merit of being more poetical than the text), and because, to increase the stimulus, the author has sagaciously left his own name for whispers and conjectures. MATERIALS OF POETRY. Good sense is the body of poetic genius, fancy its drapery, motion its life, and imagination the soul that is everywhere, and in each; and forms all into one graceful and intelligent whole. to with delight, as a charge and recreation, will suffice to realize in literature a larger product of what is truly genial, than weeks of compulsion. Money and immediate reputation form only an arbitrary and accidental end of literary labour. The hope of increasing them by any given exertion will often prove a stimulant to industry; but the necessity of acquiring them will, in all works of genius, convert the stimulant into a narcotic. ILL-DESERVED COMMENDATION. Praises of the unworthy are felt by ardent minds as robberies of the deserving. SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON. Shakspeare, no mere child of nature-no automaton of genius-no passive vehicle of inspiration, possessed by the spirit, not possessing it, first studied patiently, meditated deeply, understood minutely, till knowledge became habitual and intuitive, wedded itself to his habitual feelings, and at length gave birth to that stupendous power by which he stands alone, with no equal or second in his own class -to that power which seated him on one of the two glory-smitten summits of the poetic mountain, with Milton as his compeer, not rival. While the former darts himself forth, and passes into all the forms of human character and passion,-the one Proteus of the fire and the flood; the other attracts all forms and things to himself, into the unity of his own ideal. SHADOW. It falls before, it follows behind, Darkest still when the day is bright; And never shadow without the light. From our shadow we cannot flee away; It walks when we walk, it runs when we run; That make this human world so dear; And what were a hope without a fear? Fixes our fondest memories there. One shadow there is, so dark, so drear, ISA CRAIG-KNOL |