"For this reason," replied Burrel--"man's mental taste, like his corporeal power of tasting, gets corrupted, or rather paralyzed, in his progress through the world, by the various stimulants he applies to it. He drinks his bottle of strong and heady wine, which gradually loses its effect, and he takes more, till at length nothing will satisfy him but Cayenne pepper." "But if he appreciates gentler pleasures," said Captain Delaware, "he must be able in some degree to enjoy them." "Of course," replied Burrel, "there are moments when the cool and pleasant juice of a peach, or the simple refreshment of a glass of lemonade will be delightful; and in such moments it is, that he feels he has stimulated away a sense, and a delightful one. Thus with poetry, and literature in general; the mind, by reading a great many things it would be better without, loses its relish for every thing that does not excite and heat the imagination, which is neither more nor less than the mental palate; and though there are moments when the heart, softened and at ease, finds joys in all the sweet simplicity which would have charmed it forever in an unsophisticated state, yet still it returns to Cayenne pepper, and only remembers the other feelings, as of pleasures lost forever. With regard to Wordsworth's poetry, perhaps no one ever did him more injustice than I did once. With a very superficial knowledge of his works, I fancied that I despised them all; and it was only from being bored about them by his admirers, that I determined to read them every line, that I might hate them with the more accuracy." Blanche Delaware smiled, and her father spoke, perhaps, the feelings of both. "We have found you out, Mr. Burrel," he said, "and understand your turn for satirizing yourself." "I am not doing so now, I can assure you," replied Burrel. "What I state is exactly the fact. I sat down to read Wordsworth's works with a determination to dislike them, and I succeeded in one or two poems, which have been cried up to the skies; but, as I went on, I found so often a majestic spirit of poetical philosophy, clothing itself in the full sublime of simplicity, that I felt reproved and abashed, and I read again with a better design. In doing so, though I still felt that there was much amidst all the splendor that I could neither like nor admire, yet I perceived how and why others might and would find great beauties and infinite sweetness in that which palled upon my taste; and I perceived also, that the fault lay in me far more than in the poetry. The beauties I felt more than ever; and some of the smaller pieces, I am convinced, will live for ages, with the works of Shakspeare and Milton."