sions. This may be observed with respect even to mere statements of facts or narrations, but it is much more apparent in matters of argument, or explanation, or disquisition. Some minds will be found to reject as tedious or incompre hensible that which is alone acceptable to other minds. Thus a lawyer's statement, or his way of laying open and arguing a question, is often insufferable to the House of Commons. He goes, as country gentlemen think, into small points, and he dwells upon nice distinctions which either they cannot see at all, or, seeing them, they regard them as frivolous and vexatious. They do not like to be bound down by exact definitions, or by narrowing points to the precise position in which they stand in the particular case before the House. They like better what they call a broad and general view, in which ordinary presumptions are taken into account, rather than the exact letter of the document; that is, the motion, or resolution, or clause under consideration. A lawyer will be shocked at inconsistencies between one clause and another, which he will forthwith clearly, indignantly, and triumphantly explain to the House. But the House instead of being obliged to him for his pains, will listen to him with impatience, and when he has done will conclude that the Honourable and Learned Gentleman has occupied a great deal of time in merely "splitting hairs." It is, therefore, of great importance that any one who desires to make an impression—which in five cases out of seven, depends upon being at once earnest and intelligible-should consider what sort of person or tribunal it is that he desires to impress. If he supposes that he will produce an effect upon a popular assembly, or upon a group of Cabinet Ministers, sitting in Council, by the same sort of intelligibleness as would be conclusive before the judges in Westminster Hall, he will find himself grievously deceived. Some one or another has given a very clever illustration of the inutility of applying close and refined arguments to ordinary minds, by reminding those who appear apt to fall into this error, that a blunt knife of ivory will cut paper a thousand times better than the sharpest razor. It is even so. We shall be foolish if we use razor arguments where people are more accustomed to such as correspond with the ivory knife. A man who converses with the accuracy and strictness of a logician, is tiresome, if not offensive. The same thing applies to subtle and minute views of any point which views are intended for the general understanding. We must take care not to be confused or contradictory, but when not speaking professionally, we must take verbal statements in their broad and general acceptation, having regard rather to the common sense, than to the erudite perception, of the auditory. 111 POETRY AND PUFFERY, THEY who look into the periodical works of criticism, especially those which issue hebdomadally, will every now and then hear of poets whom never by any chance, will they hear of anywhere else. Epics and other " entire poems," as the phrase is, are written, and printed, and lauded exceedingly by some friend in a weekly journal, and then, strange to say, they are as if they had never been. I can only account for this upon the supposition that the puff of the good-natured friend is so strong as to send the whole edition up into the seventh heaven of poesy, the proper region of such exalted performances, from which the sheets never find their way down again among the creatures of earth's common mould. I am the more led to this opinion from observation of the fact, that the more intense the eulogy of these poetical flights, the more certain it is that the weekly paper being laid by, we shall never hear one word more about the work thus eulogised. It is to be noted also that poems of the class I allude to, are generally of a very flighty character, and, therefore, when set in motion by the vigorous puff of criticism, away they soar, completely out of sight, disdaining to "go off," as booksellers vulgarly term it, over the counter, in exchange for gold and silver. My own opinion is, that, whoever may be the gainers, the world has no great loss by the mysterious disappearance of the much-be-praised rhapsodies, from which specimen scraps are culled by the weekly critics. As soon as a young man who fancies himself poetical, gets far enough advanced to lose all manner of regard for whatsoever is rational and coherent in thought, and simple in expression, he rushes into print. Then he falls down and worships some weekly critic. Then he gets praisedand there's an end-that is to say of the poem, but by no means of the mischief. The poet does not write again-at least not an ❝entire poem" for publication—but he becomes a pensive attorney, or a bilious barrister, panting for prodigious change in all things moral, political, social, and literary; but, above all, for "enlargement of the popular mind" as to the merits of those romantic, philosophic, didactic, emanations of poetry, which it is the high destiny and glorious privilege of modern enlightenment to produce. Now, I think that— "Twere well that writers of the school romantic Should change their names, and dub themselves the frantic. But to do that would be to use a plain word to express a simple truth, of which there is, alas! no hope. The newest specimens I have seen of this romantic and philosophic school are from what the weekly critic who produces them to public admiration calls "an entire poem on Venice." This is no bad subject for an historical and reflective poem, and any one of strong feeling would be at no loss for passionate appeals to the sensibility of readers. I remember some years ago, when Mr. Pistrucci, the prompter at our Italian Theatre, was exhibiting as an improvisatore in London, some one of the company proposed to him as a subject Venezia, when, after some moments of apparently melancholy thoughtfulness, he burst forth into a strain of passionate lamentation which might have moved to sympathy even " a malignant and a turban'd Turk," if there had been one present among the audience. The new poem, it seems, describes Venice as "Wasting in melancholy wanness there:" which may be true enough sometimes; but unless we altogether disregard the account given by a rather celebrated author, in a work called "Beppo," Venice is by no means uniformly triste. But let us have some more pretty description from the new poem— "The stucco peels from every time-stain'd wall, O'er bridge and quay the grass unheeded grows, Each palace piecemeal drops * * The sluggish water sleeps below |