must involve something of a gossiping nature, and proceed upon experiences familiar to the existing community, or at least likely to be received by them in consequence of some previous tinge of inclination. You do not pay weekly visits to your friends to lecture them, whatever good you may do their minds. There will be something compulsory in reading the Ramblers, as there is in going to church. Addison and Steele undertook to regulate the minor morals of society, and effected a world of good, with which scholarship had little to do. Gray was a book-man; he wished to be always lying on sofas, reading" eternal new novels of Crebillon and Marivaux." This is a true hand. The elaborate and scientific look of the rest of his reading was owing to the necessity of employing himself; he had not health and spirits for the literary voluptuousness he desired. Collins, for the same reason, could not employ himself; he was obliged to dream over Arabian tales, to let the light of the supernatural world half in upon his eyes. "He loved," as Johnson says, (in that strain of music, inspired by tenderness), "fairies, genii, giants, and monsters; he delighted to rove through the meanders of enchantment, to gaze on the magnificence of golden palaces, to repose by the waterfalls of Elysian gardens." If Collins had had a better constitution, I do not believe that he would have written his projected work upon the Restoration of Literature, fit as he was by scholarship for the task, but he would have been the greatest poet since the days of Milton. If his friend

Thomas Warton had had a little more of his delicacy of organization, the love of books would almost have made him a poet. His edition of the minor poems of Milton is a wilderness of sweets. It is the only one in which a true lover of the original can pardon an exuberance of annotation; though I confess I am inclined enough to pardon any notes that resemble it, however numerous. The "builded rhyme" stands at the top of the page, like a fair edifice, with all sorts of flowers and fresh waters at its foot. The young poet lives there, served by the nymphs and fauns.

Hinc atque hinc glomerantur Oreades.

Huc ades, o formose puer: tibi lilia plenis
Ecce ferunt nymphæ calathis: tibi candida Nais
Pallentes violas et summa papavera carpens,
Narcissum et florem jungit bene olentis anethi.

Among the old writers I must not forget Ben Jonson and Donne. Cowley has been already mentioned. His boyish love of books, like all the other inclinations of his early life, stuck to him to the last ; which is the greatest reward of virtue. I would mention Izaak Walton, if I had not a grudge against him. His brother fishermen, the divines, were also great fishers of books. I have a grudge against them and their divinity. They talked much of the devil and divine right, and yet forgot what Shakespear says of the devil's friend Nero, that he is "an angler in the lake of darkness." Selden was called "the walking library of our nation." It is not the pleasantest idea of him; but the library included poetry and wit, as

well as heraldry and the Jewish doctors. His Table Talk is equally pithy and pleasant, and truly worthy of the name, for it implies other speakers. Indeed it was actually what it is called, and treasured up by his friends. Selden wrote complimentary verses to his friends the poets, and a commentary on Drayton's Polyolbion. Drayton was himself a reader, addicted to all the luxuries of scholarship. Chapman sat among his books, like an astrologer among his spheres and altitudes.

How pleasant it is to reflect, that all these lovers of books have themselves become books! What better metamorphosis could Pythagoras have desired! How Ovid and Horace exulted in anticipating theirs! And how the world have justified their exultation! They had a right to triumph over brass and marble. It is the only visible change which changes no farther; which generates, and yet is not destroyed. Consider: mines themselves are exhausted; cities perish; kingdoms are swept away, and man weeps with indignation to think that his own body is not immortal.

Muoiono le città, muoiono i regni,

E l'uom d'esser mortal par che si sdegni.

Yet this little body of thought, that lies before me in the shape of a book, has existed thousands of years nor since the invention of the press, can any thing, short of an universal convulsion of nature, abolish it. To a shape like this, so small, yet so comprehensive, so slight, yet so lasting, so insignificant,

yet so venerable, turns the mighty activity of Homer, and so turning, is enabled to live and warm us for ever. To a shape like this turns the placid sage of Academus to a shape like this the grandeur of Milton, the exuberance of Spenser, the pungent elegance of Pope, and the volatility of Prior. In one small room, like the compressed spirits of Milton, can be gathered together

The assembled souls of all that men held wise.

May I hope to become the meanest of these existences? This is a question which every author, who is a lover of books, asks himself some time in his life; and which must be pardoned, because it cannot be helped. I know not. I cannot exclaim with the poet,

Oh that my name were numbered among theirs,
Then gladly would I end my mortal days.

For my mortal days, few and feeble as the rest of
them may be, are of consequence to others. But I
should like to remain visible in this shape. The little
of myself that pleases myself, I could wish to be ac-
counted worth pleasing others. I should like to sur-
vive so, were it only for the sake of those who love me
in private, knowing as I do what a treasure is the pos-
session of a friend's mind, when he is no more. At all
events, nothing while I live and think, can deprive
me of
my value for such treasures. I can help the
appreciation of them while I last, and love them till I
die; and perhaps, if fortune turns her face once

more in kindness upon me before I go, I may chance, some quiet day, to lay my over-beating temples on a book, and so have the death I most envy.

LXIII.-BEES, BUTTERFLIES, &c.,

WITH THE CONSIDERATION OF A CURIOUS ARGUMENT, DRAWN FROM THE GOVERNMENT OF THE HIVE.

ALEXANDER said, that if he were not Alexander, he should wish to be Diogenes. Reader, what sort of animal would you be, if you were obliged to be one, and were not a man?

Irish Reader :-A woman.

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Oh, ho! The choice is judicious, but not to the purpose, you divil:"—we mean, out of the pale of the species. Consider the question, dear Readers, and answer it to your friends and consciences. The pastime is pretty, and fetches out the character. Nor is there any thing in it unworthy the dignity of your humanity, as that liberal term may show us, without farther reasons. Animals partake with us the gifts of song, and beauty, and the affections. They beat us in some things, as in the power of flight. The dove has the wings of the angel. The meanest reptile has eyes and limbs, as well as Nicholas, Emperor of all the Russias. Sir Philip Sydney tells us of a riding-master at Vienna, who expatiated so eloquently on the qualities of the noble animal he had to deal