And it you could fail to perceive the conspicuous and capacious &c. which in its omnisignificance may promise anything, and yet pledges the writer to nothing; and if you could also overlook the mysterious monograph [Illustration: a tetrahedron] your attention was invited to all this by a sentence of Butler's on the opposite page, so apposite that it seems as if he had written it with a second-sight of the application thus to be made of it: ‘There is a kind of physiognomy in the titles of books no less than in the faces of men, by which a skilful observer will as well know what to expect from the one as the other.’ This was the remark of one whose wisdom can never be obsolete; and whose wit, though much of it has become so, it will always be worth while for an Englishman to study and to understand. [Footnote 1: SHAKESPEARE.] “Mr. D'Israeli has said that ‘the false idea which a title conveys is alike prejudicial to the author and the reader, and that titles are generally too prodigal of their promises;’ but yet there is an error on the other hand to be avoided, for if they say too little they may fail of attracting notice. I bore in mind what Baillet says upon this subject, to which he has devoted a long chapter: _le titre d'un Livre doit être son abregé, et il en doit renfermer tout l'esprit, autant qu'il est possible. Il doit être le centre de toutes les paroles et de toutes les pensées du Livre; de telle sorte qu'on n'y en puisse pas même trouver une qui n'y dit de la correspondance et du rapport._ From this rule there has been no departure. Every thing that is said of Peter Hopkins relates to the Doctor prospectively, because he was the Doctor's master: every thing that may be said of, or from myself, relates to the Doctor retrospectively, or reflectively, because he, though in a different sense, was mine: and every thing that is said about anything else, relates to him collaterally, being either derivative or tributary, either divergent from the main subject, or convergent to its main end. “But albeit I claim the privilege of motley, and in right thereof I must have liberty Withal, as large a charter as the wind, To blow on whom I please;——[2] yet I have in no instance abused that charter, nor visited any one too roughly. Nor will I ever do against all the world what John Kinsaider did, in unseemly defiance,—nor against the wind either; though it has been no maxim of mine, nor ever shall be, to turn with the tide, or go with the crowd, unless they are going my road, and there is no other way that I can take to escape the annoyance of their company.” [Footnote 2: SHAKESPEARE.] “And is this any reason, Mr. Author, why you should get on as slowly with the story of your book, as the House of Commons with the business of the nation, in the present reformed Parliament, with Lord Althorpe for its leader?”