It is only dislocated minds whose movements are spasmodic.
Every fresh acquirement is another remedy against affliction and time.
It is supposable that, in the eyes of angels, a struggle down a dark lane and a battle of Leipsic differ in nothing but excess of wickedness.
A cultivated reader of history is domesticated in all families; he dines with Pericles, and sups with Titian.
What philosopher of the schoolroom, with the mental dowry of four summers, ever questions the power of the wand that opened the dark eyes of the beautiful princess, or subtracts a single inch from the stride of seven leagues?
A book becomes a mirror, with the author's face shining over it. Talent only gives an imperfect image,--the broken glimmer of a countenance. But the features of genius remain unruffled. Time guards the shadow. Beauty, the spiritual, Venus,--whose children are the Tassos, the Spensers, the Bacons,--breathes, the magic of her love, and fixes the face forever.
Books, of which the principles are diseased or deformed, must be kept on the shelf of the scholar, as the man of science preserves monsters in glasses. They belong to the study of the mind's morbid anatomy, and ought to be accurately labelled. Voltaire will still be a wit, notwithstanding he is a scoffer; and we may admire the brilliant spots and eyes of the viper, if we acknowledge its venom and call it a reptile.
Many books belong to sunshine, and should be read out of doors. Clover, violets, and hedge roses breathe from their leaves; they are most lovable in cool lanes, along field paths, or upon stiles overhung by hawthorn, while the blackbird pipes, and the nightingale bathes its brown feathers in the twilight copse.
Of many large volumes the index is the best portion and the usefullest. A glance through the casement gives whatever knowledge of the interior is needful. An epitome is only a book shortened; and as a general rule, the worth increases as the size lessens.
Criticism must never be sharpened into anatomy. The delicate veins of fancy may be traced, and the rich blood that gives bloom and health to the complexion of thought be resolved into its elements. Stop there. The life of the imagination, as of the body, disappears when we pursue it.
The gloomy recess of an ecclesiastical library is like a harbor, into which a far-traveling curiosity has sailed with its freight, and cast anchor. The ponderous tomes are bales of the mind's merchandise. Odors of distant countries and times steal from the red leaves, the swelling ridges of vellum, and the titles in tarnished gold.
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