learned to appreciate."] The pleasant man to you is the man you can rely upon; who is tolerant, forbearing, and faithful.... Again, the habit of over-criticism is another hinderance to pleasantness. We are not fond of living always with our judges; and daily life will not bear the unwholesome scrutiny of an over-critical person." The petty annoyances and wanton bitternesses of life make us, in our impatience, sometimes wish to fly from all companionship; and contributed, no doubt,--he himself could not tell how much,--to make the author of the Genius of Solitude exclaim, with so much feeling, "Happy is he who, free from the iron visages that hurt him as they pass in the street, free from the vapid smiles and sneers of frivolous people, draws his sufficingness from inexhaustible sources always at his command when he is alone! Blest is he who, when disappointed, can turn from the affectations of an empty world and find solace in the generous sincerity of a full heart. To roam apart by the tinkling rill, to crouch in the grass where the crocus grows, to lie amid the clover where the honey-bee hums, gaze off into the still deeps of summer blue, and feel that your harmless life is gliding over the field of time as noiselessly as the shadow of a cloud; or, snuggled in furs, to trudge through the drifts amidst the unspotted scenery of winter, when Storm unfurls his dark banner in the sky, and Snow has camped on the hills and clad every stone and twig with his ermine, is pleasure surpassing any to be won in shallowly consorting with mobs of men." "The longer I live," said Maurice de Guerin, "and the clearer I discern between true and false in society, the more does the inclination to live, not as a savage or a misanthrope, but as a solitary man on the frontiers of society, on the outskirts of the world, gain strength and grow in me. The birds come and go, and make nests around our habitations; they are fellow-citizens of our farms and hamlets with us: but they take their flight in a heaven which is boundless; the hand of God alone gives and measures to them their daily food; they build their nests in the heart of the thick bushes, and hang them in the height of the trees. So would I, too, live, hovering round society, and having always at my back a field of liberty vast as the sky."