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he turned into ridicule, and chuckled while he parodied it thus—

"Who slays fat oxen should himself be fat."

His life of Milton was full of meanness, and, if not of falsehood, that sort of misrepresentation which is sometimes worse than absolute falsehood. He was all his life long a believer in ghosts, and declared that he heard his mother once, after her death, exclaim, "Sam, Sam, Sam!" three times, although nothing came of it: and his prejudices in conversation veiled and obscured all the excellencies of his character behind a rough and most discourteous demeanour. He summarily wound up a discussion with a lady who had the better of him in argument, and, as a sort of closing mollifier, said, "I hope, doctor, we may meet in heaven," with, "Madam, I don't want to meet a fool any where."

Altogether, Biography, we believe, does not record another instance of prejudices, in so great a man, so inveterate, intolerant, and unreasoning, and yet in the neighbourhood of some of the noblest traits that ever shone over a human soul. Contemptible as they appear, much as they deform the character, there can be no question that the strength of his will was allowed to give stability to his follies-follies at many of which we now

heartily laugh, although given forth with all the pompous verbiage of the most classic rotundity. Society, at present, is far more conventional than

gauze

Artificialities spread work around us every

in the time of Dr. Johnson. their gaudy but steel where, and we lapse into the mere defenders and stereotypists of ceremony and form. We live not for ourselves, but for others. We bow at other biddings: we consult not our own convenience, but the convenience of our neighbours; and this not from any godlike, but from the most vulgar motives. We spend wealth upon carpets, and glass, and pictures, and large houses, and costly plate, not that we care about such things, but because the custom of society demands such expenditure of us. We purchase the Beautiful, not that it may be ever before us, hanging like a crystalised aspiration or invocation-not that we care for the Beautiful, but because the Beautiful is the priestess at the altars of the Useful: and in this age of wine worship, priest worship, gold worship, free spirits are needed to consecrate themselves, by a lofty education, to separate between the precious and the vile, and, by their own great example, to plead for the spiritual freedom and independence of man in education, for this lofty liberty. The dangers are not to be looked for so much from the stern and forbidding frown, from the repulsive and persecuting spirit; the associates of slavery in our

times use the seductions and allurements of vanity the incense steaming and reeking round the altars of that cruel goddess, Respectability, or Fashion, or by what other name she may be called; and to him who simply casts away from him conscience, opinion, inquiry, and quietly yields himself to the stream; she says, as her great prototype said, "All these will I give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me." Credit at the bank, plate in the escrutoire, silks, carpets, broadcloth, mansions, parks nothing is too vast; your pay shall be proportioned to your prostration-your chains to your slavery. Young friend, determine on the Life of Freedom, and say with brave Sir Henry Wotton

"How happy is he born and taught,
Who serveth not another's will,
Whose armour is his honest thought,
And simple truth his only skill!
This man is saved from servile bands
Of hope to rise, or fear to fall,—
Lord of himself, though not of lands,
And having nothing, yet hath all."

CHAPTER X.

INTELLECTUAL DANDYISM.

Ar the outset of the Intellectual Life, perhaps it may be as well to guard the young aspirant to the portals of Knowledge against a very common deformity beheld there; The Intellectual Dandy the spirit of the Fop is not confined to clothes and fashions; there are the Beau Brummels of the Literary Institute, as well as of the tailor's shop. The Literary Fop is, indeed, but a very small affair; as innocent and tame an animal, my friend, as you could well meet. The danger, therefore, is not in any thing he can do to you, but in the contamination, and in the possibility that you may become one like him; for this Fop is "a very attractive and agreeable young man," or rather to adopt the patois which such persons use, "a vevwy atwactive agweeable young man.' It is one of the characteristics of this class of characters that they mutilate the English language most barbarously. Very few words are pronounced with

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any degree of correctness; their information is supposed to be most extensive, since travelling from street to street they have picked up a vast hodgepodge, a kind of "Omnium gatherum," without any reference to quality, but with great reference to quantity; and there is no book, no science, no paper, no person, upon which or whom they are not prepared to pronounce dogmatic strictures. They are a kind of gad-fly dancing about in all the pools, and over all the fields of life; their shirt fronts presenting a perfect white table land, and tyes, of most startling projection; vests after the most approved stair carpet fashion, and trowsers to match, being rather more gaudy. Every thing of body and mind is arranged to strike with surprise; those books therefore are read which all people are talking about. Their heads are vacant usually of any information, though ready enough to follow in the wake of the clap-trap orator of Mechanics' Institutes or Literary Societies. It may safely be questioned whether any of the motley group ever read a really serious book or a book that had a serious purpose. The life of these young men is an everlasting offering upon the altar of Sensuality and Selfishness; every thing in the world is made to reflect the character of self: they truly deserve the character of the Poet; they are, wherever found,

"A reasoning self-sufficing thing,
An intellectual all in all."

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