People who live on the outside of the charmed circle of letters, but who believe that the men and women that compose it are of a different mould from the rest of mankind, and who long to be permitted to penetrate the rose-hedge and learn the facts of Armida's garden for themselves, sometimes learn them too clearly for their dreams to be ever possible again. They have a favourite author--a poet, say, or a novelist. If a poet, he is probably one whose songs are full of that delicious melancholy which makes them so divinely sad; an æsthetic poet; a blighted being; a creature walking in the moonlight among the graves and watering their flowers with his tears:--if a novelist, he is one whose sprightly fancy makes the dull world gay. A friend takes the worshipper to the shrine where the idol is to be found; in other words, they go to call on him at his own house. The melancholy poet 'hidden in the light of thought,' is a rubicund, rosy-gilled gentleman, brisk, middle-aged, comfortable, respectable, particular as to his wines, a connoisseur as to the merits of the _chef_, a _bon vivant_ of the Horatian order, and in his talk prone to personal gossip and feeble humour. The lively novelist, on the other hand, is a taciturn, morose kind of person, afflicted with perennial catarrh, ever ready with an unpleasant suggestion, given to start disagreeable topics of a grave, not to say depressing, nature, perhaps a rabid politician incapable of a give-and-take argument, or a pessimistic economist, taking gloomy views of the currency and despondent about our carrying trade. As for the women, they never look the thing they are reputed to be, save in fashion, and sometimes in beauty. A woman who goes to public meetings and makes speeches on all kinds of subjects, tough as well as doubtful, presents herself in society with the look of an old maid and the address of a shy schoolgirl. A sour kind of essayist, who finds everything wrong and nothing in its place, has a face like the full moon and looks as if she fed on cream and butter. A novelist who sails very near the wind, and on whom the critics are severe by principle, is as quiet as a Quakeress in her conversation and as demure as a nun in her bearing; while a writer of religious tracts has her gowns from Paris and gives small suppers out of the proceeds. The public character and the private being of almost every person in the world differ widely from each other; and the hero of history who is also the hero to his valet has yet to be found.