hard-headed, practical man, as full of worldly wisdom as most of his fictitious characters are devoid of it. That Dryden, who was personally more moral than any of the reigning wits at the commencement of the Restoration, was, in the beginning of his career, the most deliberately and unnaturally coarse as a writer--absolutely toiling and laboring against the grain of his genius, to be sufficiently obscene to please the town. That three great wits--Gay, Pope, and Arbuthnot--joined in the production of a play which was condemned the first night it was acted. That Abernethy, who was so bold in the practice of his profession, suffered for so many years from extreme diffidence in the lecture-room--"an unconquerable shyness, a difficulty in commanding at pleasure that self-possession which was necessary to open his lecture;" and that much as he sometimes forgot the courtesy due to his private patients, he was never unkind to those whom charity had confided to his care. (Leaving home one morning for the hospital when some one was desirous of detaining him, he said, "Private patients, if they do not like me, can go elsewhere; but the poor devils in the hospital I am bound to take care of.") That Godwin, who wrote against matrimony, was twice married; and while he scouted all commonplace duties, was a good husband and kind father. That Mrs. Radcliffe had never been in Italy when she wrote The Mysteries of Udolpho, yet her paintings of Italian scenery, and of the mountains of Switzerland, for truth and richness of coloring, have never been surpassed by poet or painter--not even by Byron. That Professor Wilson, whose fame in great part rests upon Noctes Ambrosianae, was indebted to Lockhart for the idea, who wrote the first of those famous papers, and gave them their name. ("I have known Lockhart long," said Wilson to a visitor; "we used to sup together with Blackwood, and that was the real origin of the Noctes. 'At Ambrose's?' 'At Ambrose's.' 'But is there such a tavern really?' 'Oh, certainly. Anybody will show it to you. It is a small house, kept in an out-of-the-way corner of the town, by Ambrose, who is an excellent fellow in his way, and has had a great influx of custom in consequence of his celebrity in the Noctes. We were there one night very late, and had all been remarkably gay and agreeable. 'What a pity,' said Lockhart, 'that some short-hand writer had not been here to take down the good things that have been said at this supper.' The next day he produced a paper called Noctes Ambrosianae, and that was the first. I continued them afterward.") That in Robespierre's desk, after his death, were found David's plans of academies for infancy and asylums for age: "being just about to inaugurate the Reign of Love when the conspiracy against him swept him down the closing abyss of the Reign of Terror." That Lamartine, the French orator, poet, and political leader, when at the zenith of his popularity, was rejected as a witness in court where he