In the records of former days there is mention of a project for extracting, bottling, and preserving sunbeams from cucumbers, for use at that season when sunbeams are rare, and cucumbers not at all. The projector seems to have inferred, that as cucumbers derived their virtue from sunbeams, it would be virtuous in cucumbers to return the deposit. Whatever virtue cucumbers had, it would not be forced. Experiment, doubtless, disappointed hope; the promising project absorbed the capital advanced, as completely as the cholicky vegetables tenaciously retained the solar rays; and the deposit never found its way to the shareholders. Any _Society for the Encouragement of Literature_, save one, is a fallacy--that one is society itself. All interposition in its behalf is feeble and doting interference. A public Joint Stock Company can neither create literary talent, nor by divided efforts obtain so much; nor with capital, however great, reward it so well, as the undivided interest, industry, and unshared purse of the private publisher. If a _Society for the Encouragement of Literature_ be instituted, when more institution is threatened, and less institution is necessary, than at any former period, such society will be a hot-bed for the cultivation of little more than hopeful weeds. A few literary _shoots_ may be set in warm borders, and drawn up under frames, to look handsome, but they will not bear transplanting to open ground. Their produce will be premature, of inferior quality, and not repay the trouble and expense of rearing. If left unsheltered, the first chill will kill them. Weak _suckers_, however well favoured, will never come to trees. The monarch of the forest, in natural solitude, drinking sunshine and dews, uninterrupted and untainted by human encroachments, and striking deep root beneath virgin earth, attains, in fulness of time, to majestic growth. In like manner the silent spirit of man, seeking peace in solitary imaginings, penetrating below the foundations of human knowledge, and generalizing and embodying the objects of sight and feeling, arrives to a grandeur astonishing to men’s eyes, because not the work of men’s hands. This self-created power, is denominated Genius. In an incipient state it evaporates beneath the meddling touch, and at maturity soars above its reach. Talent is ungovernable. It directs itself, appoints its own trustees for uses, and draws drafts upon the public which are honoured at sight. The demand for talent is greater than the supply. What is to be _done_?--nothing. What _can_ be done?--nothing. Literature must be let alone. Under bounties and drawbacks, it becomes tortuous and illicit. * * * * * FLORAL DIRECTORY. Channelled Ixia. _Ixia Bulbocodium._ Dedicated to _St. Gregory_. [18] Butler’s Saints. [19] Ribadeneira’s Saints. [20] Porter’s Flowers. [21] Nichols’s Anecdotes. [22] Ibid. ~March 13.~