improve the reason is quite beside their purpose; they merely design to titillate the fancy or provide talking matter for village oracles. In not one of their systems do I perceive a regular progression of reasoning whereby the mind may be led, from truth to truth, to knowledge, as we ride step by step up to a fair temple on a goodly hill of prospect. They jumble together heaps of facts, the most wonder-striking they can get, which may indeed be said to confound the imagination by their variety; but there is no ratiocinative dependence between them, nor are they referred to demonstrative principles, which would render people knowledgeable, as well as knowing, of them. Each is a syllabus indeed, but not a science. It tells many things but teaches none. There is little merit due to me for perceiving this error, and none for avoiding it. Algebra is the only true arithmetic. The latter is founded on the former in almost all its rules, and one is just as easily learned as the other. If arithmetic is to be taught rationally it must be taught algebraically. With half the pains that a learner takes to make himself master of the rule of three and fractions, he would acquire as much algebra as would render every rule in arithmetic as easy as chalking to an inn-keeper. I am apt to speak in the King Cambyses' vein, but you understand what I wish to convey. As to the continuation of the "Lives of the Poets," it is a work sadly wanting, but I am not the person to supply the desideratum, even were my power equal to the deed. Criticism is abomination in my sight. It is fit only for the headsmen and hangmen of literature, fellows who live by the agonies and death of others. You will say this is not the criticism you mean, and that there is a different species (the only genuine and estimable species) which has an eye to beauty rather than defect, and which delights in glorifying true poetry rather than debating it. Aye, but have you ever considered how much harder it is to praise than to censure piquantly? I should ever be running into the contemptuous or abusive style, as I did in the "Letters to Dramatists." Besides, even in the best of poets, Shakspeare and Milton, how much is there justly condemnable? On the inferior luminaries, I should have to be continually pointing out spots and blemishes. In short, as a vocation I detest criticism. It is a species of fratricide with me, for I never can help cutting, slashing, pinking, and carbonadoing--a most unnatural office for one of the brotherhood, one who presumes to enrol himself among those whom he conspires with the Jeffreys and Jerdans to mangle and destroy. It is a Cain-like profession, and I deserve to be branded, and condemned to wander houseless over the world, if ever I indulge the murderous propensity to criticism. I was sorry to hear from Taylor yesterday that you were not in good health. What can be the matter with you, so healthfully situated and employed? Methinks you