In the casual outcome of such a character, gay fancies and suggestions without stint, sallies of wit and bonhomie, all sharing more or less in a certain lyric glow; herein the spiritual bounty to us would seem to be an unconsciousness in the almoner, involving, too, an indifference or unconcern as to who may appropriate, or as to what purpose the appropriation may be applied. In this particular, what recks the Marquis de Grandvin, for example? He is the ripe peach-tree shedding its abundance, careless of the garner; he is the Prince of Golconda at the ball, some of whose innumerable diamond buttons drop from his raiment unheeded by him in the chance fleeting rubs and collisions of the dance. But how transitory these prodigal improvident ones can prove!--and once gone, how soon all but good as forgotten! True, were an example here demanded, one adapted for popular illustration, not readily could it be supplied. Literature will not furnish it, since these natures, never directly expressing themselves in literature, have no memorial place in its records. Neither are they Alexanders and Napoleons that the fame which is all but independent of literature should trumpet them. Nevertheless, in local tradition, and comparatively recent, I do find a citable instance which, though below the grade, say, of a de Grandvin, and but in a minor way to the purpose, may perhaps for these reasons serve the better to actualise the general truth, in a measure bring it home. Rufus Choate, the Boston advocate, when inspired to his best before an audience, how he exhilarated and elevated and transported his hearers. But he is gone; and all those fireworks of elfish passion and wit, where are they? Vainly in the Ceramicus of the libraries will you seek any enduring monument of that oratorical pyrotechnist. As well ransack the museums of Natural History for the bottled-up tail of Encke’s comet. What shall we say, then? Are there natures strong to draw and enthrall, yet whose influence is like that of the magnet, only operative as a bodily presence? Yes, withdraw the magnet and all is over. And holds this true as to the Marquis de Grandvin? Yea, and shall he also at last vanish, sailing into the boundless Nil, leaving no phosphorescent wake or magic moon-glade behind? Shall naught remain of his cherub sparkle and spirit?--nothing of all those ineffable qualities that make him what Raphael, Milton’s affable archangel, would be seen to be were he commissioned hither to dissuade mankind from ever perpetrating an inhumanity or a pun? And, oh, thou Admirable Crichton, nay, a thousandfold more admirable than he, for art thou not kindly as wise?--of all thy more sustained sallies of bright fantasy and humour, let alone thy erratic coruscations, shall nothing be crystallised into permanence? Nothing at last remain of our Lord Bountiful but the empty larder and void dusty bin? When we laud thee departed, shall the infidel