_S._ Well: you complain, however, that things of the greatest use in reality are not always of the greatest importance in an imaginary and romantic point of view? _R._ Certainly; this is the very pivot of all our well-grounded censure and dissatisfaction with poetry, novel-writing, and other things of that flimsy, unmeaning stamp. _S._ It appears, then, that there are two standards of value and modes of appreciation in human life, the one practical, the other ideal,—that that which is of the greatest moment to the Understanding is often of little or none at all to the Fancy, and _vice versâ_. Why then force these two standards into one? Or make the Understanding judge of what belongs to the Fancy, any more than the Fancy judge of what belongs to the Understanding? Poetry would make bad mathematics, mathematics bad poetry: why jumble them together? Leave things, that are so, separate. _Cuique tribuito suum._ _R._ I do not yet comprehend your precise drift. _S._ Nay, then, you will not. It is granted that a certain thing, in itself highly useful, does not afford as much pleasure to the imagination, or excite as much interest as it ought to do, or as some other thing which is of less real and practical value. But why _ought_ it to excite this degree of interest, if it is not its nature to do so? Why not set it down to its proper account of Utility in any philosophical estimate—let it go for what it is worth there, _valeat quantum valet_—and let the other less worthy and (if you will) more meretricious object be left free to produce all the sentiment and emotion it is capable of, and which the former is inadequate to, and its value be estimated accordingly! _R._ Will you favour me with an illustration—with any thing like common sense? _S._ A table, a chair, a fire-shovel, a Dutch-stove are useful things, but they do not excite much sentiment—they are not confessedly the poetry of human life. _R._ No.