The last quoted line is, as you see, from Johnson—Sam Johnson the lexicographer, Sam the learned, and, if I chose to be ill-natured, I might add Sam the sot. A man of infinite jest and “a stolid kind of humour, but cuttingly sarcastic”; a man whom Scotland delighted to honour, and did honour, and treated with the greatest of kindness and hospitality, which he rewarded by trying to hold Scotland and the Scots up to ridicule ever after. A man whose memory therefore I cannot revere. But, giving him his due, when he says “Wretched, unidea’d girls,” he does not mean to insult young womanhood. I think rather that, although his English was like himself, too heavy and elephantine, he meant to convey the impression that a girl who has no ideas, no mind, cannot be truly happy. And here I agree with Scotland’s foe. I pity a poor lassie who has no mind of her own, or who is possessed of a soul that is not firmly anchored in herself, and ballasted with ideas and convictions which are independent of those of anyone else. A flighty soul like this carries with it a nervous, silly, unhappy brain, and a body that is too often feeble and far from healthy. I have met young ladies who confused Sam Johnson with the rare Ben Jonson. Now Sam was too obese and fond of the pleasures of the table to understand and appreciate girlhood and innocent beauty. Ben was a man spiritual, not grossly corporeal. It was Ben who wrote the lovely lines to Celia— “Drink to me only with thine eyes And I will pledge with mine. Or leave a kiss but in the cup And I’ll not look for wine.” The idea, however, was not original, but borrowed from the Greek. But listen, solid Sam never could have penned such lines as Ben wrote in his “Good Life, Long Life”— “Give me a look, give me a face That makes simplicity a grace; Robes loosely flowing, hair as free; Such sweet neglect more taketh me Than all the adulteries of art— That strike my eyes, but not my heart.” Well, I believe I could preach a long, useful and pleasant health sermon from the very lines I have quoted. This is not quite my intention, however. But nevertheless I like to see a volume of poetry in a girl’s hand, and some of our older poets really teach us many a lesson, and these alas! are far too much neglected. Fashions, even in poetry, change as well as in music. Give me simplicity in both, and keep your Browning and your Wagner too. Many a lady in society pretends to love both, who knows nothing about either. But, taking Gray as an example of a true and simple poet, whose lines you can read without racking your brain in wondering what the poet means, is there not, think you, a deal of truth in the verse that heads this paper?