That he is a man of fastidious tastes goes without saying, and rather critical of men and women, in manners as well as morals. An acute observer of small social phenomena, he does not deem it beneath his dignity to criticise the man who cannot pronounce "view," and the woman, even if it be Margaret Fuller, who says "nawvels." That he is a sensitive man he told us long ago, and that-- "There are times When all this fret and tumult that we hear Do seem more stale than to the sexton's ear His own dull chimes. "From crib to shroud! Nurse o'er our cradle screameth lullaby, And friends in boots tramp round us as we die, Snuffling aloud. "Children with drums Strapped round them by the fond paternal ass, Peripatetics with a blade of grass Between their thumbs. "Cockneys that kill Thin horses of a Sunday,--men with clams, Hoarse as young bisons roaring for their dams, From hill to hill. "Soldiers with guns, Making a nuisance of the blessed air, Child-crying bellmen, children in despair, Screeching for buns. "Storms, thunders, waves! Howl, crash, and bellow, till ye get your fill. Ye sometimes rest; men never can be still But in their graves." Sometimes these daily trials are exaggerated to a quite unbearable point, as in the case of Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle, who suffered intense tortures in later life from the ordinary every-day noises; but in the case of Dr. Holmes, as with most people with healthy nerves, these things only give a whimsical annoyance. The battles of Mrs. Carlyle with Chanticleer, as she depicts them, have all the interest of a new Iliad, and the days before Troy have not been studied with more breathless interest than some of her encounters with the makers of the many noises with which London is filled. Dr. Holmes, too, has had his battle with the music-grinders, as who has not? Do we not all know "these crusaders sent from some infernal clime"? and have we not all felt with him the relief when "silence like a poultice comes to heal the blows of sound"? Do we not all know the "Treadmill Song," also, in practical life? and are we not intensely weary of it sometimes? Not many of us can say with him, at the close of one of our "treadmill" days,-- "It's pretty sport; suppose we take A round or two for fun." or add,-- "If ever they should turn me out When I have better grown, Now hang me but I mean to have A treadmill of my own."