mine of knowledge lay there beside them, had they but the skill and the energy to work it.

At times too, rare indeed, he would venture on a word of remarka sentence, perhaps, of praise of the volume he had just laid down, sufficient to attract the attention of a buyer; and these little criticisms having been known to do good service, the dealers bore grateful memory of them.

He was an object of much interest to me. I used to watch him as he read, and hasten to take up the book he had quitted, curious to see whether one class of reading had its principal attraction for him, and what that class might be. No clue could I find to his nature through his studies. Now he would pore for hours over a volume of Marco Polo-now over a play of Ben Jonson's. I have seen him, on the same day, reading Dugald Stewart, 'Paul and Virginia,' 'Hopner's Equations,' and 'Bossuet's Sermons'-nothing in his manner showing which interested him the most. The branch of the "Trade" who deal under atmospheric pressure is probably not remarkable for learning; and it was not unfrequent, when a book was offered there for purchase, to see a reference made to this stranger, who in a moment pronounced on the edition, and whether it had or had not been superseded by another-what its merits, what its defects. Very cunning was he in Elzevirs and Aldines, and had a rare taste in the margins and capital letters of the old Italian printers.

Over and over used I to speculate asto how he came by this knowledge, and wonderingly ask myself if it were a source of happiness to him. Again, I questioned, would all this greedy pursuit of learning I saw in him survive if he were suddenly to become rich and affluent, the owner of a well-stocked library, abounding in every appliance of ease and comfort? Would he hang as enraptured over that volume in

the deep recess of a cushioned chair, as I have seen him when the rain beat against his face and the rude wind almost swept him and his treasure away? Would all the leisurely indulgence of literature equal in ecstasy those moments snatched hurriedly in this dark alley, or down that narrow lane? Perhaps not. The battle is not to the strong, nor the race to the swift, any more in worldly happiness than in other things. The heart to enjoy is the great requisite ; the objects to be enjoyed come only second; and there is a something in those pleasures won by a sacrifice which have a sweetness all their own,-just as the guinea of a man's own earning has its especial value. Doubtless, then, this poor Eugene Aram had many a bright moment even as he stood cold and shivering there, nor knew the pang of sorrow till he came to part with what had charmed and entranced him.

No doubt, too, he often wandered away in thought to day-dreams of what delight it would be to be the owner of these treasures-to taste of them at will, having their society at all times to cheer, enliven, comfort, and console him. Nor is it impossible that his fancy gave to such a picture a colouring no reality could vie with, for there are few of us who cannot so cheat our own natures, and make the possible far more glowing than the actual.

one

What reminded me of this poor fellow was seeing what I may call his counterpart in society who, like him, was too poor to buy, yet longed to possess, and was thus forced to steal passing fitful glances of what he dare not linger over.

"Poor George! we are all very fond of him; but of course the girls never think of him." "He's too poor to marry," says mamma, who, like the benevolent stallkeeper, gives him leave to beguile his hour or so with what he must never possess. And how like is the Eugene Aram of Love to the Eugene

Aram of Letters! The same deep devotion, the same fidelity, the same indifference to all other pursuits, the same humility in each. Even to that terrible test, the power of surrendering to another what they are not rich enough to secure for themselves, are they identical.

What scores of these do we find in the world, and how touching are they in their deep humility! Turning over the pages, as it were, looking wistfully into the volume, reading a line here, catching a passage there, and going away with some stray bit locked up in their hearts to ponder over, to dream over, to shed tears over-who knows? Look at the poor fellow when some transient word of kindness has fallen upon him, and say, have you ever seen a human thing so full of happiness? Watch him as he falls back, dropping the book a real purchaser would bid forwatch him as he steals away to hide his shame and his sorrow in another room, and tell me, have you ever seen more misery than his ?

"It is only George!" as mamma says in a sort of explanatory way to the party who comes to buy, and must needs ask, "Who is that fellow with the light whiskers?" "It is only George So-and-so." "Only!" Oh, the ineffable misery of that only"-the cruelty that declares him to be of that category which are not even catalogued-creatures that nobody wants, nobody asks for.

66

Mammas are occasionally more severe than the stall folk; they will not even let him have the passing enjoyment of the few moments he would snatch from sorrow. They have no compassion for his indolence, nor any pity for his self-indulgence. What business has he with these fair pages, so

white, so smooth, so hot-pressed! They are scarcely conciliated by all his humility, deep though it be. "He oughtn't to be there at all. It is not delicate of him; he knows perfectly well that he hasn't sixpence; he ought to feel "-I don't know what; but he ought certainly to see that seeing and hearing, when the sight is beauty and the sound is of sweet voices, are luxuries little suited to him who has nothing, and he should go his way, close his eyes, and walk in darkness.

Think of him, when he comes back some morning, to hear that the book was sold. He was already in the third volume-deep, deep in the story. He had dreamed of it all night; and now another has carried it off, and he shall never hear more of it. Ay, these things come of reading at the stalls-looking over what one can't buy, and ought not even to glance at.

I wonder if he who carries off the prize ever bestows a thought on the poor creature whose reading he has so ruthlessly cut short. Is he sorry for him? Perhaps not

perhaps he never heard of him. Perhaps he merely saw him as he stood at the stall, and noticed him as he stole meekly, modestly away.

Now and then, I take it, some of these poor scholars rise to greatness, and become men of mark and note; the small spark of genius glowing out till it becomes like a sun, to cover the earth with its light, so that they who read by it see what their unaided sight had never shown them. I wonder—oh, how I wonder!-if then, in the day of triumph and success, they ever enjoyed, with all the appliances of luxury, what they once felt as they stood at the stall, unable to buy, unable to relinquish.

death, and thereby provoked a very candid examination into his claims to greatness, he was not, it is said, as much flattered by the experiment as he had hoped to be. Some gifts were altogether denied him, others were conceded with certain little accompanying detractions. Ingenious explanations were given to show why he had not done scores of things he had never dreamed of; and finally, curious speculations were thrown out as to how far certain æsthetical deficiencies in his nature may not have impaired the exercise of his purely intellectual faculties. In fact, the critics presumed to be able, by a post mortem, to pronounce upon the man's defects pretty much as the surgeon might on his physical derangements; and as the doctors, on discovering a lesion here, an adhesion there, an ossification of this, or a hypertrophy of that, could unerringly declare why life was shortened, so would these skilful anatomists be able to say how it was that he failed in this or broke down in that what were those qualities that were wanting to have made him as eminent as certain other gifts indicated he might have been.

In a word, the restraint of all concealment would appear to do for these wonderful critics just as much as the "autopsy" does for the doctor. All is laid open to them. There lies "the subject," and we can trace every fibre of him now. All the little devices by which he deceived, all the subtleties by which he cajoled us, avail him no longer. We see him as he was in life; and as the surgeon is often obliged to own his astonishment by what a frail thread vitality hung so long, so will the biographer be forced to confess that there was wonderfully little strength in all that vigour that once impressed us-only a mere pretence of passion in the pathos that once had all but convulsed us. I am ready to own that I am sorry for this. Mistaking our geese for swans may be an ornitho

logical error, but is not bad philosophy. I am certain that we are disposed to over-cultivate the difficulty of being pleased, and that, on the whole, we would infinitely rather be content than discontented.

At all events, I am determined I will never put my friends to the severe test of animadverting on my character during my life, by any announcement of my death. "Les absents ont toujours tort," says a wise adage of that language which is so seldom mistaken in worldly matters; and as Curran tells us, "Death and absence differ but in name.

Indeed, I know I couldn't do it if I would. I could no more submit to the knife of any critic than I could endure the scalpel of the dissecter without crying out, "Stop

I am alive!" I admit this is a great weakness on my part, in some measure the result of temperament, and partly, too, the consequence of a certain self-indulgent mode of dealing with any difficulty by going out to meet it in preference to averting or waiting to see if it would not pass by. My combativeness enables me to bear the open stand-up fight; what I really fear is, what may take place when I am not forthcoming to defend myself.

For this reason I have never been able to understand how people have courage to go in mask to a ball, and endure all the impertinences to which the disguise exposes them. Surely there is no throwing off one's identity by the mere assumption of a domino; and what terrible stabs to one's selfesteem may be given under the cope of a monk or the cowl of a Capuchin! The next thing to this is to publish anonymously-to give to the world a poem or a novel, and lie perdu while your friends read, ridicule, or revile it-to sit calmly, smilingly by, when some one reads you aloud to a laughing audience, overwhelmed with your absurdity

to be warned against your own book-to be confidentially told," It's

the very worst thing of the season"-to hear little fragments of yourself bandied about as domestic drolleries, and to listen to curious speculations as to how or why the publisher had ever adventured on such a production, and grave questions put if there be really a public for such trash.

It is an awful thing to assist at even this much of one's own autopsy, and to hear all the impertinent things that the very stupidest of your acquaintances can say of you. But there is still worse than this; there is a depth lower than abuse; there is a pang infinitely more painful than all that sarcasm or malevolence can inflict; and this is, the being obliged to listen, patiently, while some addleheaded imbecile relates the argument or the story of your book; mistaking the characters, misplacing the events, totally inverting your moral, and exhibiting you, in the very moment of his commendation, as a creature so cruelly akin to himself that you might be his brother-to be consolingly assured that though the tenor of the book be slow, and the author unquestionably a dull man, there are now and then little gleams of intelligence in him, and little signs of would-be smartness. Then come the guesses, whether you may not be Mr Spurgeon, Martin Somebody, or perhaps a female writer.

It is twenty-one years, compassionate reader, since I underwent all this, and the suffering is as fresh as if it was yesterday. I remem

ber the very table where they cut me up-I can recall the chair on which I sat to be lacerated-I can bring to mind the drivelling idiot that had got bits of my unhappy production, as he thought, by heart, and declaimed them, with interpolated balderdash of his own, till my reason actually wandered under the infliction.

I declare it, and declare it advisedly, that though few men are ever killed by severe criticism, numbers drop into an early grave, or, worse again, into drivelling incapacity, from the effects of a mistaken admiration. The people who go about advertising your deformities, praising the hump on your back, your squint, your hare-lip, these are your real destroyers.

The last of my anonymous miseries was the seeing my volumethe work over which I had toiled and laboured, pondered over by day, dreamed of at night, revolved in such shapes that it became part of my very nature, and its characters dearer to me than kith or kin

seeing this held aloft by a book auctioneer as he said, "What shall we say for this, gentlemen? I have not read it, but I am told that it once had a considerable vogue; it is handsomely bound in calf, with gilt edges. Will any gentleman say two shillings-half the cost of the binding ?-Thank you, sir! At sixpence it is going-gone!"

Oh, Fame! what a terrible ignis fatuus you are; and, dear me ! what cruel "croppers" some of us do meet in pursuit of you!

I read in the advertisements-I have never seen it of a little volume, with the title, 'Who's Who,' purporting to be a sort of vade mecum to all that large class of people who like to hear about other people with whom they do not live.

The taste for this sort of knowledge must unquestionably be on

the increase, since a large space in many of our leading newspapers is devoted to a species of gossip in which personality is the point; and here we have a periodical-for this little volume appears annually— especially instituted to supply this want.

The taste is, besides, a very