moment, we all know how loose, wordy, and unsymmetrical such a composition always is: and it is unquestionable that the very best product of the human soul must be turned off, not at the rate of speaking, but at the much slower rate of writing: yes, and oftentimes of writing with many pauses between the sentences, and long musing over individual phrases and words. Could Mr. Tennyson have spoken off in half-an-hour any one of the Idylls of the Kingt Could he have said in three minutes any one of the sections of In Memoriam? And I am not thinking of the mechanical difficulty of composition in verse: I am thinking of the simple product in thought. Could Bacon have extemporized at the pace of talking, one of his Essays? Or does not Ben Jonson sum up just those characteristics which extempore composition (even the best) entirely wants, when he tells us of Bacon that 'no man ever wrote more neatly, more pressly; nor suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in that he uttered?' I take it for granted, that the highest human composition is that which embodies most thought, experience, and feeling; and that must be produced slowly and alone. And if a man's whole heart be in his work, whether it be to write a book, or to paint a picture, or to produce a poem, he will be content to make his life such as may tend to make him do his work best, even though that mode of life should not be the pleasantest in itself. He may gay to himself, I would rather be a great poet than a very cheerful and happy man; and if to lend a very retired and lonely life be the likeliest discipline to make me a great poet, I shall submit to that discipline. You must pay a price in labour and self-denial to accomplish any great end. When Milton resolved to write something 'which men should not willingly let die,' he knew what it would cost him. It was to be 'by labour and intent study, which I take to be my portion in this life.' When Mr. Dickens wrote one of his Christmas Books, he shut himself up for six weeks to do it; he 'put his whole heart into it, and came out again looking as haggard as a murderer.' There is a substratum of philosophic truth in Professor Aytoun's brilliant burlesque of Firmilian. That gentleman wanted to be a poet. And being persuaded that the only way to successfully describe tragic and awful feelings was to have actually felt them, he got into all kinds of scrapes of set purpose, that he might know what were the actual sensations of people in like circumstances. Wishing to know what are the emotions of a murderer, he goes and kills somebody. He finds, indeed, that feelings sought experimentally prove not to be the genuine article: still, you see the spirit of the true artist, content to make any sacrifice to attain perfection in his art. The highest excellence, indeed, in some one department of human exertion is not consistent with decent goodness in all: you dwarf the remaining faculties when you develop one to abnormal size and strength. Thus have men been