The selection of a place of residence, even though we only intend to pass a few short years in it, is from the intellectual point of view a matter so important that one can hardly exaggerate its consequences. We see this quite plainly in the case of authors, whose minds are more visible to us than the minds of other men, and therefore more easily and conveniently studied. We need no biographer to inform us that Dickens was a Londoner, that Browning had lived in Italy, that Ruskin had passed many seasons in Switzerland and Venice. Suppose for one moment that these three authors had been born in Ireland, and had never quitted it, is it not certain that their production would have been different? Let us carry our supposition farther still, and conceive, if we can, the difference to their literary performance if they had been born, not in Ireland, but in Iceland, and lived there all their lives! Is it not highly probable that in this case their production would have been so starved and impoverished from insufficiency of material and of suggestion, that they would have uttered nothing but some simple expression of sentiment and imagination, some homely song or tale? All sights and sounds have their influence on our temper and on our thoughts, and our inmost being is not the same in one place as in another. We are like blank paper that takes a tint by reflection from what is nearest, and changes it as its surroundings change. In a dull gray room, how gray and dull it looks! but it will be bathed in rose or amber if the hangings are crimson or yellow. There are natures that go to the streams of life in great cities as the heart goes to the water-brooks; there are other natures that need the solitude of primæval forests and the silence of the Alps. The most popular of English novelists sometimes went to write in the tranquillity of beautiful scenery, taking his manuscript to the shore of some azure lake in Switzerland, in sight of the eternal snow; but all that beauty and peace, all that sweetness of pure air and color, were not seductive enough to overcome for many days the deep longing for the London streets. His genius needed the streets, as a bee needs the summer flowers, and languished when long separated from them. Others have needed the wild heather, or the murmur of the ocean, or the sound of autumn winds that strip great forest-trees. Who does not deeply pity poor Heine in his last sad years, when he lay fixed on his couch of pain in that narrow Parisian lodging, and compared it to the sounding grave of Merlin the enchanter, "which is situated in the wood of Brozeliande, in Brittany, under lofty oaks whose tops taper, like emerald flames, towards heaven. O brother Merlin," he exclaims, and with what touching pathos! "O brother Merlin, I envy thee those trees, with their fresh breezes, for never a green leaf rustles about this mattress-grave of mine in Paris, where from morning till night I hear nothing but the