Nevertheless, I can not prevent the thing. It is so, and it can not be otherwise, and my only hope of appeasing those who are excited against me is in my further confession, that no love affects me so pleasantly; the contemplation of no happiness makes me so happy, as that between married people. It is amazing to myself, because it seems to me, that I living unmarried, or mateless, have with that happiness little to do. But it is so, and it always was so.--_Miss Bremer._ [From the London Examiner.] SIDNEY SMITH ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY. _Elementary Sketches of Moral Philosophy_; delivered at the Royal Institution, in the years 1804, 1805, and 1806. By the late Rev. Sydney Smith, M.A. Longman and Co. How difficult it is to discover the merits of a manuscript appears from the history of this book. Lord Jeffrey, consulted as to the expediency of its publication, while it yet existed but in pen and ink, gave a decidedly adverse opinion. But some hundred copies having been printed for private distribution, and a copy reaching Lord Jeffrey, he hastened, with his accustomed candor and sweetness of disposition, to retract his hostile verdict, after reading the book in print; and (only three days before he was attacked by the illness which terminated his valuable life) thus wrote to Sydney Smith's widow: "I am now satisfied that in what I then said, I did great and grievous injustice to the merit of these lectures, and was quite wrong in dissuading their publication, or concluding they would add nothing to the reputation of the author; on the contrary, my firm impression is, that, with a few exceptions, they will do him as much credit as any thing he ever wrote, and produce, on the whole, a stronger impression of the force and vivacity of his intellect, as well as a _truer_ and more engaging view of his character, than most of what the world has yet seen of his writings." One practical application of this anecdote is to enforce the importance of calligraphical studies upon authors. A hieroglyphical hand is the false medium excluding British authors from the public; In general we should say that there is no class of men whose education in this respect is so deplorably imperfect, or to whom "only six lessons" would so often be priceless. We must confess that the book before us has taken us by surprise, notwithstanding our affectionate esteem and admiration for its writer. It has raised our estimate of the power and range of his intellect, of his insight into human character, of his well-balanced judgment, of his tolerance and charity undebased by compromise with the vicious or mean, of the vigorous play of his thoughts, of the sustained beauty of his style, of his eloquence as well as his humor, and of his profundity no less than of his wit. Hurriedly composed and unrevised though the lectures obviously are, fragmentary as the condition is in which they have been preserved, they are an invaluable addition to English literature.