intention, seems to only ripen distracting noises in the minds of the vast majority sunk in the turgid mean of commonplace; for how many good souls can be bothered with anything more abstract than the very latest soggy novel, just hot and dirty from the press, in sunshiny weather? Even moonshine is wasted upon all but those feather-brains on the lookout for ghosts. And it may be noted, although it is not strictly relevant, that, with the multiplication of periodicals of one sort and another, even stormy weather is beginning to fail the few writers in our day who are audacious enough to still cling to the old ambitions of letters, in spite of worldly prudence and all the warnings of the literary tip-staffs who infallibly know “the market”—for in the periodical world it is raining hot-baked sensations and novelties every hour in the twenty-four—the depressing vulgar commonplaces that have made up the round of human existence from the dawn of history and always will. But we must make up our minds to accept this as one of the small ironies of life: thought is smothered in an immense spawn of crocodile words. The newspapers we have always with us; and they succeed in making such an unceasing and damnable din that only an insignificant minority of exceptionally cool heads can hear themselves think. It is worthy of remark that the printing press has contributed in no small degree toward driving the Devil out of orthodox theology. This is a fact, although Atheists, Rationalists and Materialists claim the credit of it. Indeed, His Eminence confessed to me, over a bottle of Lachryma Christi at the Theological Club, that he was completely discouraged, and he announced that he was revolving in his mind the expediency of abandoning the long and honorable career, which he has enjoyed in the polity of human life. He said that he had found his old-fashioned and painstaking tortuous methods of depraving men’s minds suddenly rendered absolutely puerile, ridiculous and contemptible by comparison with the unwearied and stupendous operations of the steam-presses of journalism. The meeting depressed me greatly; for whatever opinions other folk may profess to hold of the Devil, the more sober imaginations, the humorous writers, will always be glad to testify to the ungrudged and inestimable services he has continually rendered them in their arduous and ill-paid calling. I have since learned definitely that the Devil was in good earnest, and has retired into a voluntary exile, whence endless deputations of learned, suppliant, apologetic and furious theologians have endeavored to coax him, but entirely in vain. He has abdicated, he replies steadfastly, forever; and the desperate situation of the theologians, whose calling and character is seriously imperiled by his obstinacy, leaves him perfectly unmoved. He declares he has been long abandoned by those who flourished upon the pleasantries which he devised