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is insupportable, yet your wife seems to enjoy it. You wonder what is coming next. Will it ever stop? Do they know how delightful silence is at times? Did they not tell that story, correcting one another precisely as now, at least twice before in your hearing? You feel the world becoming too coarse for a man of refinement and sensibility, and mourn over it in gloom. Why did you not half-an-hour ago give over that languid mental drudging? Why did you not quietly (hurry would be certain failure) read one chapter of the Vicar of Wakefield, or of Amelia, or of that delightful fiction, Sir Roger de Coverley, or of Jane Austen's novels? If you had done this the world would gradually have come to rights; your room would not appear so dark, nor your dooks so repellant, nor all your relatives so very stupid. It would never have occured to you that your life was a monotonous one, made up of a great number of days each like the other; it really is not so monotonous, with little children growing up about you, hurting themselves and requiring solace, saying every day some new, wise thing, and effecting such extraordinary improvements by stone walls, canals, and artificial lakes, in your back-garden. Life would have seemed not so miserable after all; your forehead would have cooled, and your eyes cleared, and your brain grown tranquil; then, too, your voice would be softer, your words less strictly to the point, and you would be giving your opinion, in quite an animated way, on that piece of family history which now appears so despicable. You are most blameworthy for the first and casual offence refusal to amuse yourself at the right time, consequent exhaustion of nervous force with no adequate return of work done, and pride in the thought that you were taking great deal out of your

self.

After work, which is a pursuit, quiet enjoyment. which is a possession, brings us advantages beyond itself. Let us go into the green inland fields in early summer, and lying on the grass with face upturned watch the white cloudlets float idly overhead, or turn to look at the merry black spiders scampering in the blades, while the cuckoo is heard at once far off and near, and the breezes come cool over our bodies. Or let us go down a month later to the sea-beach, and listen to the waves breaking and breaking on the shore all the July hours, and see the sunlight sleep on the water, and hear the sound of the sail swung round, brought gently with the lazy lapping, and sucking, and swishing about the weedy stones, and

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And this is living indeed; we are following after nothing, not even enjoyment; we cannot tell how it came to pass, "it seems that we are happy;" we have paused for a little on our journey, at the wells, to drink, and the rest has made us dreamy; and yet, though we seek them not, great gains are ours; they come to us of themselves, like that physical balm and those quiet thoughts that come to us, while we lie cool and languid, satisfied for hours to watch half unconsciously the changes of the light, after a long illness, in the first days of returning health. But we cannot always get to the grassy meadow or the yellow sands. And we should therefore be glad to have upon our shelves some books which may serve as a partial substitute for these books which we read with no view to remote advantages, over which we may linger restfully when we return home wearied and faint with the pursuing of the day. A great master in the philosophy of living wisely has spoken on this whole subject in a way worthy of himself, and of a heart, which if men would only believe the possession of two things by one person possible, they would see was as noble as his head. It was doubtless intended," wrote Bishop Butler, in his first sermon upon the love of God, "that life should be very much a pursuit to the gross of men. But this is carried so much farther than is reasonable, that what gives immediate satisfaction, i. e., our present interest, is scarce considered as our interest at all. It is inventions which have only a remote tendency towards enjoyment, perhaps but a remote tendency towards gaining the means enly of enjoyment, which are chiefly spoken of as useful in the world."

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Innocent enjoyment, how good a thing it is! It keeps the temper sweet, and, when it is mixed with love and thankfulness and sunny days, brings us some of that spirit of pure, gentle, and peaceable wisdom which we might aptly name after Izaak Walton. And he of all men perhaps knew best what lei

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sure was, and must have done his business even in a quiet, old-fashioned way. There were no monster shops in those days, and his in Cheapside was only seven feet and a half in length; but that house was doubtless the place he lived in, his home, and therefore we do not hear that he ever called it a "concern or an "establishment." He enjoyed many pleasant hours in it, we may be sure, reading Drayton's Polyolbion, and Silvester's translation of Du Bartas; and sometimes he could leave it for a day, or several days, to wander with "honest Nat and R. Roe" along the edge of green fields, rods in hand, like honest fishermen, pitying the "poor rich men" who grudged themselves a rest, listening to the milkmaid's song, and bringing their braces of trout in the evening to some country inn, where the ale was good, and the sheets were fragrant with lavender. And innocent enjoyment is a good for ever. It does not die with the passing day. Often, years after, the remembrance of a single moment - when we reached a hill top and suddenly beheld the sea, when we found in latter February or early March the first spring-flowers, when we listened to the gladness of some pure soprano air, or the storm of choral passion the remembrance of this comes upon us with a keen thrill of pleasure, almost as it first seemed in the nerves themselves,

yet been offered no satisfactory solution of the great problem of convalescence, - how to hold a book, and turn the pages, without letting your nursetender suspect there is danger of catching cold. It is best to allow some one to read to you aloud; and if you have ever so done yourself for one who was very dear, you will know that the reader's enjoyment is often greater than the listener's. And there is surely some one who will not think it hard to leave the drawingroom and the music (you cannot hear it) and the talk for your sake, to come to your bedside, and make the pillows cool, and read in a clear, sweet voice the books you like, for an hour or thereabout, till the darkness falls, and you, knowing it may be done with a good conscience, and no ingratitude, have dropped away to sleep.

But on the whole (to bring together all the conditions of delight), you will enjoy a novel most if you are in health, resting after work, with a prospect of continued rest, under golden five-and-twenty rather than over it, and if you read the novel aloud, in the summer, in the country, to a small but sympathetic circle of hearers. And there exist, not only in the fictions, but in every shire of real England, so many hospitable Uncle Georges, so many kind Aunt Janes, and so many agreeable cousins, that all the above conditions may probably be realized if you but say "yes" when they ask you down in midsummer, from the grey walls and now deserted quadrangles of college, upon a visit of indefinite length. The change is a great and pleasant one. The delightful rambling Doubtless the remembrance of the enjoy- old house! What shadows of leafy boughs ment we have had from literature (from sway upon your blind at night! What poetry even) is a much less rapturous pleas- whispering there is of rippled grass when ure than these; but, on the other hand, it you open your window in the morning! is much less evanescent, and more easily The cream is wonderful. The little pats of reproducible, and when the original enjoy- cool pale butter are admirable works of art. ment was heightened by sympathy, the It is pleasant to see the calves feed pleasure of the remembrance-even the creatures with soft liquid eyes, and lips that remembrance of an hour's novel-reading-drip as they pause to give one another's may reach a point of considerable eleva

Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart,
And passing even into the purer mind
With tranquil restoration.

tion.

To realize the maximum of delight derivable from novel-reading several unfavourable circumstances have to be excluded. You must not be solitary; you must not be old (the delicate haze of morning should give some mystery to life); you must on no account be married; and conscience must not once say that you ought to be at work. A little indisposition which keeps you for a day or two in bed will sometimes not detract from your pleasure; only it must not be such as to require your hands to remain under the clothes, for there has

those

ears a fraternal lick. And though at first you were taken a little aback by the number of Heros and Neros and Gertys and Flirts, you soon find out their distinctive personality, and learn the character of every living thing, down to the gander and the turkey-cock. Then you are supposed to have been killing yourself with work, and are gravely exhorted to the duty of idling for a little. To which exhortations you, with a gentle remonstrance (implying their general futility, with a willingness to resign your most ardent desires, for once, to be obliging), allow yourself to yield. There is a general impression that you have lately

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spécialité of the house - which in course of preparation fill the room with an indefinable distant peachy odour; the maiden aunt nods visibly in the arm-chair, only asserting her wakefulness at times by preternaturally intelligent questions; and now she is fairly gone; you are left clearly monarch of all you survey, with the sense of being a magnificent monarch too, and of diffusing pleasure amongst your subjects with generous self-sacrifice.

obtained a fellowship or two, or at least something which proves you to be (as you overheard your maiden aunt telling the rector's wife) a remarkably clever young man." You ride with your cousins Fanny and Lucy one day, and with your cousins Emily and Anne the next, a horse being always ready for you to keep you from "those books" You interest yourself in the parish feuds, espousing the family cause in the great stray-donkey question. You discuss Tennyson and Longfellow, and even But the essential prerogative of novelgive esoteric teaching, to a select school of reading as a relaxation is, that one can enone, in the mysteries of Robert Browning. joy it anywhere, and at almost any time You wonder why the "Psalm of Life" is when enjoyment is possible. If one is seaunderlined and marked so emphatically in sick, or has the tooth-ache, or has a suit in young ladies' volumes of poetry are they chancery, of course there is nothing for it all going to leave" footprints on the sands but to be as miserable as possible, and get of time?" or has the marking here a hid- some satisfaction in that way. And it is den reference to the curate, whose soul, its some satisfaction to believe oneself by far sorrows and its aspirations are known to the most unfortunate, ill-used, unhappy perEmily? You throw off free expositions of son in the world; it is a source of great dig the more trying passages of "In Memoriam;" nity. The man who got miserrimus cut and then, to test your cousins' critical upon his tombstone must have had one acumen, you read as a recently published pleasure all his own, when he reflected how poem of the Laureate's your own verses on far below him the poor folk were who knew "Youth and Love;" which having in sim- only the positive and comparative degrees ple faith been received and admired, the of wretchedness; and was it not Mrs. Pulgirls rise in your esteem and you confess the let's chief support under the afflictions of innocent deceit. You visit the dairy, and life to remember that she had consumed help those dainty little feet over the slob- more bottles of medicine than any woman bery yard. You return and take part in in the parish? But nearly every one who the duets of Mendelssohn, or listen to sonatas has the capacity of happiness in him is caof Beethoven. And, last, you suggest that pable of being made happier by a pleasant if it be generally approved, and if a num- book. Croquet is a very charming game, ber of imaginary objections, which ingeni- but you cannot croquet on a winter's eveously indicate your thoughtfulness, are of no ning in the parlour. Advertisements tell weight, you will begin the first volume of us that some inventive tradesman will supSomebody's Secret,"or" Legacy," or "Small ply ladies and gentlemn with skates that House," or of "James and I," or "John Jenk- run upon a drawing-room carpet. But unins," or "How did he get it?"—the great less the mistress of the drawing-room be novel of the day. A leap-up in all the possessed with a generous desire to further voices is sufficient evidence that the sugges- the manufactures of Kidderminster or Brustion is an agreeable one, the considerate sels, she will probably object to this popuFanny only, after crying, "O do, Charley," lar in-door amusement. An enthusiastic reminding her sisters in a faint way that cricketer- a college friend of the writer's perhaps Charles had rather be reading his -was, he remembers, many years since, books. You generously declare your readi- often to be seen of a morning, in pink shirt ness to sacrifice the afternoon. Whereupon and cap, bowling against a Liddell and Scott ensues an impromptu round or catch, well set up in the corner of his chamber. But, concerted and sustained, "Wait one moment after ail, these eminent lexicographers were till I bring my work. Wait till I bring my unsatisfactory bats, and too invaribly alwork, one moment;" and before the girls lowed themselves to be taken by a "twisreturn with the Berlin-wool, the anti-macas-ter." There are many people to whom sar, the crochet-edging, and the Dorcas whist is now a mystery, and in a company rudimentary you-know-not-what, you have, of six nominally well-educated persons (may without question, been pronounced "such a these words not reach thine ear, dear shade good fellow!" instead of the shabby hum- of Sarah Battle!) one may be reduced to bug that you are. Your uncle is in the double-dummies. And then, which of all five-acre with the dogs; your aunt is super- these pleasures will make the hours pass, intending some wonderful preserves- a when a wet day finds you on your summer

sent up.

ramble among the lakes and mountains, not Fanny say to Anne not to mind Charand the length of grey cloud, and the inces- ley, for "she knows he does not believe half sant sound of the rain-fall forbid one foot- he says?" And it is certainly trying to step over the threshold? If you are wise find yesterday evening's conversation so you will forget on such days that it is July well remembered, when you admitted there or August, call for a fire in your bedroom, were some men whose first love is the love and order all the books in the house to be of all their lives, and philosophized at large And sometimes your good fortune on the subject in a much sounder strain, will surprise you. In a wild corner of Ire- arguing (after De Quincey) that a succesland, who could have expected to find a sion of passiuncles exhausts the soil of the volume of the Calcutta Magazine for 1810, heart and impairs the capacity for genuine the hymns of Mr. Wesley, the Adventures and profound emotion. But you will reof an Atom, and, best of all, a tattered copy tract nothing, and maintain, against much of Waverley? In such company a man is opposition, the consistency of all that you superior to fate, and may laugh at the have put forth. Till, finding yourself senweather. And if a thunderstorm should tenced to separation for heresy from all ever keep the reader housed in the valley cousinly communion during an indefinite of the Aar, at Reichenbach, let him know period of time, your contumacy gives way, that there is to be found in the dining-room and you profess a sincere desire for restorabook-case, beside many other works of in- tion, with a readiness to undergo any apterest, a German version of the letters of pointed penance after tea, whether it be that true English gentleman, Sir Charles listening to Beethoven upon the sofa, or Grandison, and of the Honourable Miss going on with the novel, or holding skeins Harriet Byron. Get far into it while the of Berlin wool on outstretched hands, while rain sweeps down the hill-sides, and keep the soft yarn glides under and around and all the while at the bottom of your heart an over, with a silent rhythm, or requires the assurance that the sun will shine bright to- approach of dainty fingers and two serious morrow on the descending, rocket-like eyes to release it from its deep entangleshoots of the falls, and the delicate azure of ments. How refined is the casuistry of the Rosenlaui ice-field. And let us all these little moralists-the subtle, angelical, thank these novel-writers for the many seraphic little doctors! What eloquent pleasant hours they have given us, and for pleaders they become when you arraign their preserving weather-bound travellers some favourite hero who loved not wisely, from a multitude of sins-grumbling, dis- but too well! What charitable distinccontent, ill-temper, and (before dinner) de- tions they discover! What store of recontermined misanthropy. dite motives they suggest! How high a standard of morality they establish for uncles and hard-hearted guardians! Many of the thinkers of modern times have learned more of dialectic, of psychology, of ethics, from such conversations as these (this is literally true), than from all the Summa Theologiæ of Aquinas.

To come to another point, you must now suppose the last entire paragraph a parenthesis, and suppose that, dusk having fallen, the cousins' hands lie idle on their laps, and you have finished your reading aloud. In the conversation which immediately ensues you may learn something of the manner in which that important system of female ethics, and that transcendental female Philosophy of the Affections, with which we are all familar, are developed and brought to perfection. If the hero of your novel has only made himself miserable enough, and remained unflinchingly constant, from the middle of the first volume till the naughty uncle is found dead over his ledger, and the will all right, in the last chapter but one, why, then he must have been a hero indeed. And when you, with a shadowy reminiscence of some article in a recent Saturday Review, insinuate the low doctrine that a man may have two sincere attachments at once, or at least in a single lifetime, are you not peremptorily commanded "not to be horrible," and does

Seriously, we do want something to talk about, some personal themes not incentive of that sprightly malice (not to speak of the "malignant truth or lie") and that telltale gossip which leaves so bitter an aftertaste on the lips of any kind or thoughtful person. It is not a pleasant thing to blush when we are alone. It is a very painful thing to long keenly and in vain to undo a moment's ill-work of the tongue, the shame and sorrow of idle words, that hasty piece of injustice, that repetition of what was intended to be uttered but once, that exaggeration indulged at the expense of truth and simplicity of mind, that sudden betrayal of the heart to an impulse of vanity, that unfortunate speech meant merely to fill a gap in conversation, but

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which wrung the nerves of some listener you about Tom, or darling Arthur. And as sharply as if it had been purposely bru- you may talk freely of them all. These tal. There is an awkwardness, and a pain-patient shadows do not readily take offence. ful acknowledgment of either intellectual The most litigious of them will never bring indigence or want of mutual sympathy, you before a jury for slander. Here is a when we discuss the weather three times brave world, where you may walk about, on the same evening. But two novel-read- and take your pleasure, and see life. The ers who have not yet grown old, and have small and the great are here, kings and therefore life enough to dispense some of it counsellors of the earth, and crossing-sweepon imaginary creations, these happy ers, and beggar-maids. And you undertalkers have always subjects of conversa- stand them so thoroughly. Shadows! tion, rich with human interest, and opening they are as real to us as most men and constant opportunities for an interchange women,-infinitely more real than many of opinions on the philosophy and the of the unknown creatures whose smooth causistry of life. Such themes did Words- clothes and smooth faces we see perhaps worth love best, and if the dearest were- every day of the year, never getting at the hearts of them; or those persons whom we might understand were we a little less eager to classify them, had we not made such complete and consistent characters for them, on the leading-passion or some such theory, in our own dramatic imaginations.

The gentle lady married to the Moor,
And heavenly Una with her milk-white lamb,

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one who knew him well has told us that the poet could be happy in less divine company than Shakspeare's, and in a less ethereal world than Fairyland, loved Fielding well, and doubtless included in his personal themes some which we surely have not forgotten the Adventures of Partridge, and Tom Jones, and Parson Adams, and Sophia Western, and the Squire, and Amelia, and Captain Booth. How many friends these novelists have given us whose doings and sayings we may pleasantly remind one another of, applaud, and censure, and laugh over, and grow tender to think of, even when the book has lain dusty on our shelves for months and months. One had rather lose sight of a good many of one's acquaintances than of that homely Wakefield family. One had rather have a good many doors closed on one than the door of that hospitable little vicarage. Every room of it we know, we have seen the mantelpiece with the epitaph over it of the monogamist's only wife; the walls adorned with pictures of Sophy's and Livy's own designing; the bed those boys" that got a lump of sugar each gave up to Mr. Burchell; and the closet where Deborah kept her gooseberry wine. Nor should we like to forget the Dominie Sampson, nor Jeanie Deans, nor Colonel Newcombe, nor old Dob, nor Mark Tapley, nor Mrs. Gamp. A goodly company! Are you over-grave? Here are merry people for you. Would you be quiet? Keep away the terrible folk who visit your sick-room in obstreperous boots, sit upon your bed-clothes, exhort you to cheer up, and maintain that you require to be roused; and call some of these gentle, tender people-Ruth Pinch if you will, or Mrs. Pendennis, to sit by you, and tell

And here we may take notice of a gain, perhaps the greatest gain, we can hope to derive from a novel. This dramatizing imagination of ours has its uses. Nay, without it life could not be a spiritual thing at all. Stimulated by love, and reacting upon love, it is the very soul of sympathy. It is the interpreter of man to man. Every action of our fellows is for us inhuman, merely mechanical, until we have ourselves put a soul behind it, until indeed we have played the dramatist, and become for a moment the man before us: and every action of ours is for others, until they have done the like, inhuman and mechanical. Uninterpreted by this wise, imaginative sympathy, our alms-deed is only so many pence, and a motion of the muscles of the face; interpreted, that motion stands for all the yearning with which our heart cries, though our lips are silent, “O my brother, O my poor sister, I love, I pity you." This is a case in which no one could be dull enough to miss the meaning of man to man. But in the multitude of cases, subtler than this, the habit of ready, faithful, and charitable interpreting of man and woman by fellow-man and woman has been, we must believe, too feebly exercised. Surely were it otherwise there would be more of tenderness, more of thoughtful kindness, more of mutual forbearance, more of charity; and less of hardness, less of ineffective goodwill, less of mutual interference, less of censoriousness. With some happy souls, indeed, this interpretation is a native power; they are the geniuses in social life or in literature, diffusing without an effort happiness and light; but with most of us it is in great

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