with the French language is very imperfect, I having never studied it anywhere but in Paris, which is awkward, as B. F. devotes himself to it with the peculiar advantage of an Alsacian teacher. The boy, I think, is doing well, between us, notwithstanding. The following is an uncorrected French exercise, written by this young gentleman. His mother thinks it very creditable to his abilities; though, being unacquainted with the French language, her judgment cannot be considered final.

LE RAT DES SALONS A LECTURE.

Ce rat çi est un animal fort singulier. Il a deux pattes de derrière sur lesquelles il marche, et deux pattes de devant dont il fait usage pour tenir les journaux. Cet animal a la peau noire pour le plupart, et porte un cercle blanchâtre autour de son cou. On le trouve tous les jours aux dits salons, ou il demeure, digere, s'il y a de quoi dans son interieur, respire, tousse, eternue, dort, et ronfle quelquefois, ayant toujours le semblant de lire. On ne sait pas s'il a une autre gite que çelà. Il a l'air d'une bête très stupide, mais il est d'une sagacité et d'une vitesse extraordinaire quand il s'agit de saisir un journal nouveau. On ne sait pas pourquoi il lit, parcequ'il ne parait pas avoir des idées. Il vocalise rarement, mais en revanche, il fait des bruits nasaux divers. Il porte un crayon dans une de ses poches pectorales, avec lequel il fait des marques sur les bords des journaux et des livres, semblable aux suivans!!!-Bah! Pooh! Il ne faut pas cependant les prendre pour des signes d'intelligence. Il ne vole pas, ordinairement; il fait rarement même des echanges de parapluie, et jamais de chapeau, parceque son chapeau a toujours un caractère specifique. On ne sait pas au juste ce dont il se nourrit. Feu Cuvier était d'avis que c'etait de l'odeur du cuir les reliures; ce qu'on dit d'être de l'odeur du cuir des reliures; ce qu'on dit d'être une nourriture animale fort saine, et peu chère. Il vit bien longtems. Enfin il meure, en laissant à ses héretiers une carte du Salon à Lecture on il avait existé pendant sa vie. On pretend qu'il revient toutes les nuits, après la mort, visiter le Salon. On peut le voir, dit on, à minuit, dans sa place habituelle, tenant le journal du soir, et ayant à sa main un crayon de charbon. Le lendemain on trouve des caractères inconnus sur les bords du journal. Ce qui prouve que le spiritualisme est vrai, et que Messieurs les Professeurs de Cambridge sont des embeciles qui ne savent rien du tout, du tout.

I think this exercise, which I have not corrected, or allowed to be touched in any way, is not discreditable to B. F. You observe that he is acquiring a knowledge of zoology at the same time that he is learning French. Fathers of families in moderate circumstances will find it profitable to their children, and an economical mode of instruction, to set them to revising and amending this boy's exercise. The passage was originally taken from the Histoire Naturelle des Bêtes Ruminans et Rongeurs, Bipèdes et Autres, lately published in Paris. This was translated into English and published in London. It was republished at Great Pedlington, with notes and additions by the American editor. The notes consist of an interrogation-mark on page 53, and a reference (p. 127) to another book "edited" by the same hand. The additions consist of the editor's name on the titlepage and back, with a complete and authentic list of said editor's honorary titles in the first of these localities. Our boy translated

the translation back into French. This may be compared with the original, to be found on Shelf 13, Division X., of the Public Library of this metropolis.

Some of you boarders ask me from time to time why I don't write a story, or a novel, or something of that kind. Instead of answering each one of you separately, I will thank you to step up into the wholesale department for a few moments, where I deal in answers by the piece and by the bale.

That every articulately-speaking human being has in him stuff for one novel in three volumes duodecimo has long been with me, a cherished belief. It has been maintained, on the other hand, that many persons cannot write more than one novel-that all after that are likely to be failures. Life is so much more tremen dous a thing in its heights and depths than any transcript of it can be, that all records of human experience are as so many bound herbaria to the innumerable glowing, glistening, rustling, breathing, fragrance-laden, poison-sucking, life-giving, death-distilling leaves and flowers of the forest and the prairies. All we can do with books of human experience is to make them alive again with something borrowed from our own lives. We can make a book alive for us just in proportion to its resemblance in essence or in form to our own experience. Now an author's first novel is naturally drawn, to a great extent, from his personal experiences that is, is a literal copy of nature under various slight disguises. But the moment the author gets out of his personality, he must have the creative power, as well as the narrative art and the sentiment, in order to tell a living story; and this is rare.

Besides, there is great danger that a man's first life-story shall clean him out, so to speak, of his best thoughts. Most lives, though their stream is loaded with sand and turbid with alluvial waste, drop a few golden grains of wisdom as they flow along. Oftentimes a single cradling gets them all, and after that the poor man's labour is only rewarded by mud and worn pebbles. All which proves that I, as an individual of the human family, could write one novel or story at any rate, if I would.

Why don't I, then? Well, there are several reasons against it. In the first place, I should tell all my secrets, and I maintain that verse is the proper medium for such revelations. Rhythm and rhyme and the harmonies of musical language, the play of fancy, the fire of imagination, the flashes of passion, so hide the nakedness of a heart laid open, that hardly any confession, transfigured in the luminous halo of poetry, is reproached as self-exposure. A beauty shows herself under the chandeliers, protected by the glitter of her diamonds, with such a broad snow-drift of white arms and shoulders laid bare, that, were she unadorned and in plain calico, she would be unendurable-in the opinion of the ladies.

Again, I am terribly afraid I should show up all my friends.

I should like to know if all story-tellers do not do this? Now, I am afraid all my friends would not bear showing up very well; for they have an average share of the common weakness of humanity, which I am pretty certain would come out. Of all that have told stories among us, there is hardly one I can recall who has not drawn too faithfully some living portrait that might better have been spared.

Once more, I have sometimes thought it possible I might be too dull to write such a story as I should wish to write.

And finally, I think it very likely I shall write a story one of these days. Don't be surprised at any time if you see me coming out with "The Schoolmistress," or "The Old Gentleman Opposite." [Our schoolmistress, and our old gentleman that sits opposite had left the table before I said this.] I want my glory for writing the same discounted now, on the spot, if you please. I will write when I get ready. How many people live on the reputation of the reputation they might have made !

I saw you smiled when I spoke about the possibility of my being too dull to write a good story. I don't pretend to know what you meant by it, but I take occasion to make a remark which may hereafter prove of value to some among you. When one of us who has been led by native vanity or senseless flattery to think himself or herself possessed of talent arrives at the full and final conclusion that he or she is really dull, it is one of the most tranquillising and blessed convictions that can enter a mortal's mind. All our failures, our shortcomings, our strange disappointments in the effect of our efforts, are lifted from our bruised shoulders, and fall, like Christian's pack, at the feet of that Omnipotence which has seen fit to deny us the pleasant gift of high intelligence, with which one look may overflow us in some wider sphere of being.

How sweetly and honestly one said to me the other day, “I hate books!" A gentleman, singularly free from affectations; not learned, of course, but of perfect breeding, which is often so much better than learning; by no means dull in the sense of knowledge of the world and society, but certainly not clever either in the arts or sciences; his company is pleasing to all who know him. I did not recognise in him inferiority of literary taste half so distinctly as I did simplicity of character and fearless acknowledgment of his inaptitude for scholarship. In fact, I think there are a great many gentlemen and others, who read with a mark to keep their place, that really "hate books," but never had the wit to find it out, or the manliness to own it. [Entre nous, I always read with a mark.]

We get into a way of thinking as if what we call an "intellectual man" was, as a matter of course, made up of nine-tenths, or thereabouts, of book-learning, and one-tenth himself. But even if he is actually so compounded, he need not read much. Society is a strong solution of books. It draws the virtue out of what is

best worth reading, as hot water draws the strength of tea-leaves. If I were a prince, I would hire or buy a private literary teapot, in which I would steep all the leaves of new books that promised well. The infusion would do for me without the vegetable fibre. You would understand me; I would have a person whose sole business should be to read day and night, and talk to me whenever I wanted him to. I know the man I would have: a quickwitted, out-spoken, incisive fellow; knows history, or at any rate has a shelf-full of books about it, which he can use handily, and the same of all useful arts and sciences; knows all the common plots of plays and novels, and the stock company of characters that are continually coming on in new costume; can give you a criticism of an octavo in an epithet and a wink, and you can depend on it; cares for nobody except for the virtue there is in what he says; delights in taking off big wigs and professional gowns, and in the disembalming and unbandaging of all literary mummies. Yet he is as tender and reverential to all that bears the mark of genius-that is, of a new influx of truth or beautyas a nun over her Missal. In short, he is one of those men that know everything except how to make a living. Him would I keep on the square next my own royal compartment on life's chessboard. To him I would push up another pawn, in the shape of a comely and wise young woman, whom he would of course take-to wife. For all contingencies I would liberally provide. In a word, I would, in the plebeian but expressive phrase," put him through" all the material part of life ; see him sheltered, warmed, fed, button-mended, and all that, just to be able to lay on his talk when I liked, with the privilege of shutting it off at will.

A Club is the next best thing to this, strung like a harp, with about a dozen ringing intelligences, each answering to some chord of the macrocosm. They do well to dine together once in a while. A dinner-party made up of such elements is the last triumph of civilisation over barbarism. Nature and art combine to charm the senses; the equatorial zone of the system is soothed by wellstudied artifices; the faculties are off duty, and fall into their natural attitudes; you see wisdom in slippers, and science in a short jacket.

The whole course of conversation depends on how much you can take for granted. Vulgar chess-players have to play their game out; nothing short of the brutality of an actual checkmate satisfies their dull apprehensions. But look at two masters of that noble game! White stands well enough, so far as you can see; but Red says, Mate in six moves;-White looks,-nods ;the game is over. Just so in talking with first-rate men; especially when they are good-natured and expansive, as they are apt to be at table. That blessed clairvoyance which sees into things without opening them,—that glorious license, which, having shut the door and driven the reporter from its key-hole, calls

upon Truth, majestic virgin! to get off from her pedestal and drop her academic poses, and take a festive garland and the va cant place on the medius lectus,—that carnival-shower of ques-tions and replies and comments, large axioms bowled over the mahogany like bombshells from professional mortars, and explosive wit dropping its trains of many-coloured fire, and the mischief-making rain of bon-bons pelting every body that shows himself, the picture of a truly intellectual banquet is one which the old Divinities might well have attempted to reproduce in.

their

66 Oh, oh, oh!" cried the young fellow whom they call John,— "that is from one of your lectures!"

I know it, I replied,—I concede it, I confess it, I proclaim it.

"The trail of the serpent is over them all."

All lecturers, all professors, all schoolmasters, have ruts and grooves in their minds into which their conversation is perpetually sliding. Did you never, in riding through the woods of a still June evening, suddenly feel that you had passed into a warm stratum of air, and in a minute or two strike the chill layer of atmosphere beyond? Did you never, in cleaving the green waters of the Back Bay,-where the Provincial blue-noses are in the habit of beating the "Metropolitan" boat-clubs,-find yourself in a tepid streak, a narrow, local gulf-stream, a gratuitous warm-bath a little underdone, through which your glistening shoulders soon flashed, to bring you back to the cold realities of full-sea temperature? Just so, in talking with any of the characters above referred to, one not unfrequently finds a sudden change in the style of the conversation. The lack-lustre eye, rayless as a Beacon-Street door-plate in August, all at once fills with light; the face flings itself wide open like the churchportals when the bride and bridegroom enter; the little man grows in stature before your eyes, like the small prisoner with hair on end, beloved yet dreaded of early childhood; you were talking with a dwarf and an imbecile, you have a giant and a trumpet-tongued angel before you!-Nothing but a streak out of a fifty-dollar lecture.-As when, at some unlooked-for moment, the mighty fountain-column springs into the air before the astonished passer-by,-silver-footed, diamond-crowned, rainbowscarfed, from the bosom of that fair sheet, sacred to the hymns of quiet batrachians at home, and the epigrams of a less amiable and less elevated order of reptilia in other latitudes.—

Who was that person that was so abused some time since for saying that in the conflict of two races our sympathies naturally go with the higher? No matter who he was. Now look at what is going on in India,-a white, superior " Caucasian" race, against a dark-skinned, inferior, but still "Caucasian" race,— and where are English and American sympathies? We can't stop to settle all the doubtful questions; all we know is, that the