love, and freedom, are the rarest of Phœnixes and birds of the sun, he can manage to put up with it, and can go on drawing vivid pictures and writing lively descriptions of all the birds in question, until they wing their way to us in the body. Doubtless, when the originals of the pictures _have_ fairly come and taken up their abode here on earth, then will all our panegyrics of them be out of place, and loathsome to the palate, and a mere threshing of empty straw. People who are _incapable of business_ can work for the press." "There's work, and there's work," the merchant, wide awake, struck in; "it all depends---- Now TRADE keeps a man; but book-writing isn't much better than spinning cotton, and spinning is next door to begging--not meaning anything personal to yourself. But all the broken-down book-keepers and bankrupt tradesmen take to the making of books--arithmetic books, and so on." The public sees what a poor opinion this shopkeeper-captain had of me, because _my_ business was only the making of books, though in old days I had been continually running in to him day and night, as notary depute, for the protesting of bills. I know the sort of view many people take of the _convenances_ of society; but I think anyone on earth will consider that, after being treated in this style, I was to be excused for going quite wild on the spot, and responding to the fellow's impertinence, although he was no longer quite in his five senses, in no less formidable a manner than by repeating, accurately and without abridgment, my "extra leaflets" from my 'Hesperus.' This, of course, was bound to put him to death--sleep, I mean. And then thousands of propitious stars arose for the daughter and the author--then commenced our feast of unleavened bread--then I could sit down with her at the front window, and tell her all that which the public has for some time had in its hands. Truly there can be nothing sweeter than to some kind tender heart, hemmed in on all sides and besieged by sermons--which cannot refresh itself at so much as a birthday ball, were it only the superintendent's and his wife's, nor with a novel, though its author be the family legal adviser: to such a beleaguered famishing heart, I say, it is more delicious than virgin honey to march up with a strong army of relief, and, taking hold of some mesh in the nun's veil which is over the soul, tear it wider, let her peep through and look out at the glimmer of some flowery eastern land--to wile the tears of her dreams to her waking eyes--to lift her beyond her own longings, and at a stroke set free the fond tender heart, long heavy with yearning, and bound in bitter slavery--to set it free, and to rock it softly up and down in the fresh spring breeze of poesy, while the dewy warmth gives birth to flowers therein of fairer growth than those of the country round.