without which the works of Irving never would have attained great popularity. He was pronounced too wordy, his details too long drawn. If this was the case fifty years ago, it is much more so now. And yet how fascinating is every page! And who but Irving could make thrilling such trivial events? Permit him the use of words, and howsoever isolated the ideas, or commonplace the events, the result was brilliant; but force him within narrow compass, not only would the charm be lost, but the work would be almost worthless. The highest delight of a healthy mind, of a mind not diseased either by education or affection, is in receiving the truth. The greatest charm in expression, to a writer who may properly be placed in the category of healthful, is in telling the truth. It is only when truth is dearer to us than tradition, or pride of opinion, that we are ready to learn; it is only when truth is dearer to us than praise or profit that we are fit to teach. If the mind be intelligent as well as healthy, it knows itself to be composed of truth and prejudice, the latter engendered of ignorance and environment, holding it in iron fetters, and with which it knows it must forever struggle in vain wholly to be free. Thus keenly alive as well to the difficulties as to the importance of right thinking and exact forms of expression, it nevertheless has its keenest pleasure in striving toward concrete truth. It is truthfulness to nature in all her beauties and deformities, rather than the construction of some more beautiful than natural ideal, that alone satisfies art, whether in the domain of painting, oratory, or literature. We of to-day, while holding in high esteem works of the imagination, are becoming somewhat captious in regard to our facts. The age is essentially informal and real; even our ideal literature must be rigidly true to nature, while whatever pretends to be real must be presented in all simplicity, without circumlocution or disguisement.