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

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. He seems to be apart from his kind; among them, but not of them.' 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 — a residence 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. See you not still the movements of the same thin severe lip, and the same eager, though faded eye? 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 energies are all drawn forth, and his interest all awakened. The clock strikes one, strikes two, and 'waning nature warns him to repose.?' He sleeps, and dreams that he is walking through whispering groves, 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.

It may be said that his enjoyments are selfish and his spirit miserly. I admit that he does not shape his life toward its great and appropriate end-the happiness of mankind in conjunction with his own. Yet he does not purposely pursue a cold-hearted, isolated existence. So 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. His countenance fluctuates not with the changes of the stocks. He lives continually on the principal and interest of his wealth; and so far from

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 of his prospect - they take not from the breadth and richness of his 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 :

'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: KneMIDOLOGY, n., [Greek uvŋuis, idos, and loyos.] The Philosophy of

Boots.'

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 theso rude men may utterly
Marvel, sith that they sit so plain,
How they come on and off again.'

Gay, in his humorous Trivia, or Walking the Streets of London,' thus adviseth as to their wear and fashion :

'When the black youth at chosen stands rejoice,

And clean your shoes' resounds from every voice;
When late their miry sides stage-coaches show,
And their stiff horses through the town move slow;
Then let the prudent walker shoes provide,
Not of the Spanish or Morocco hide;

The wooden heel may raise the dancer's bound,
And with the scalloped top his step be crowned;
Let firm, well-hammered soles protect thy feet,
Through freezing snows, and rains, and soaking sleet.
Should the big last extend the shoe too wide,
Each stone will wrench the unwary step aside;
The sudden turn may stretch the swelling vein,
Thy crackling joint unhinge, or ankle sprain;
And when too short the modish shoes are worn,
You'll judge the seasons by your shooting corn.'

And melancholy Philips thus bemoans their doleful exit:

'My galligaskins that have long withstood

The winter's fury, and encroaching frosts,

By time subdued, (what will not Time subdue!)

An horrid chasm disclosed, with orifice

Wide discontinuous; at which the winds,
Eurus and Auster, and the dreadful force
Of Boreas, that congeals the Cronian waves,
Tumultuous enter, with dire chilling blasts,
Portending agues.'

These three have here written their life in short-hand. All English poetry, from Chaucer to Wordsworth, is but their memoirs. No description is perfect, till brave knight' and 'fair ladie' are booted and slippered to your eye.

What intellectuality appears in the boot, when we consider it as an index of the qualities of the mind! A boot characterizes a man as surely as his countenance. From the light finished boot of the city exquisite, to the heavy brogue of the laborer; from the uncinctured sandal of the wily Jew, to the clattering wooden clogs of the clumsy, stolid German; from the moccasin of the free, acute, and light-heeled Indian, to the small whimsical shoe of the mentallychained and childish Chinese; how aptly each character is typified! Who does not see in the elegant ladies'-slipper the sylphide step, and the exquisite form and beauty of the wearer? In the loose, bonylooking, knotty boot, professional intellect, redolent of musty manuscripts, and ponderous, dusty black-letter tomes? Does not the open shoe of the child, slightly run down in the heel, speak of the frank carelessness of merry youth? - and the light pump, of the active roving tar? Who could ever mistake the character of the courtly and fantastic long-toe' of the elegant and witty Cavalier, for that of the unpolished democratic jack-boot' of the severe and sullen Roundhead? We might go on to say how the buckskin slipper tells of literary gentlemen, in loose morning-gowns: the stout shoe, innocent of blacking, of the pay-per-day mechanic; the neatly blacked halfboot of the established merchant, who is rich enough to discard the fine boots of his younger and poorer days, and to wear half-boots and old clothes; but verily, boot, shoe, pump, slipper, gaiter, moccasin, and every individual of every species, in the whole relationship, has a marked individuality. But what boots it?' quoth the reader. We find tongues in trees and sermons in stones: there is as