What constitutes a charm in many memories is often extremely varied. Darkly shaded rooms with shutters closed in on an intensely hot American summer day. Chinese matting on the floors--the mirrors and picture frames covered with _tulle_--silence--the scent of magnolias all over the house--the presence of loved ones now long dead and gone--all of these combined form to me memory-pictures in which nothing can be spared. The very scent of the flowers is like musk in a perfume or "bouquet" of odors--it _fixes_ them well, or renders them permanent. And it is all like a beautiful vivid dream. If I had my life to live over again I would do frequently and with great care, what I thought of too late, and now practice feebly--I would strongly impress on my mind and very often recall, many such scenes, pictures, times or memories. Very few people do this. Hence in all novels and poems, especially the French, description generally smacks of imitation and mere manufacture. It passes for "beautiful writing," but there is always something in really unaffected truth from nature which is caught by the true critic. I read lately a French romance which is much admired, of this manufactured or second-hand kind. Every third page was filled with the usual botany, rocks, skies, colors, fore and backgrounds--"all very fine"--but in the whole of it not one of those little touches of truth which stir us so in SHAKESPEARE, make us smile in HERRICK or naive PEPYS, or raise our hearts in WORDSWORTH. These were true men. To be true we must be far more familiar with Nature than with scene painting or photographs, and to do this we must, so to speak, fascinate ourselves with pictures in life, glad memories of golden hours, rock and river and greenwood tree. We must also banish resolutely from our past all recollections of enemies and wrongs, troubles and trials, and throw all our heart into doing so. Forgive and forget all enmities--those of Misfortune and Fate being included. Depend upon it that the brighter you can make your Past the pleasanter will be your Future. This is just the opposite to what most people do, hence the frequent and fond quotation of pessimistic poetry. It is all folly, and worse. One result is that in modern books of travel the only truthful or vivid descriptions are of sufferings of all kinds, even down to inferior luncheons and lost hair brushes. Their joys they sketch with an indifferent skill, like HEINE'S monk, who made rather a poor description of Heaven, but was "gifted in Hell," which he depicted with dreadful vigor.