ss, but it
is very stimulating, and makes one hungry for more than he needs for the
nourishment of his thinking-marrow. To feed this insatiable hunger, the
abstracts, the reviews, do their best. But these, again, have grown so
numerous and so crowded with matter that it is hard to find time to
master their contents. We are accustomed, therefore, to look for
analyses of these periodicals, and at last we have placed before us a
formidable-looking monthly, "The Review of Reviews." After the analyses
comes the newspaper notice; and there is still room for the epigram,
which sometimes makes short work with all that has gone before on the
same subject.

It is just as well to recognize the fact that if one should read day and
night, confining himself to his own language, he could not pretend to
keep up with the press. He might as well try to race with a locomotive.
The first discipline, therefore, is that of despair. If you could stick
to your reading day and night for fifty years, what a learned idiot you
would become long before the half-century was over! Well, then, there is
no use in gorging one's self with knowledge, and no need of self-reproach
because one is content to remain more or less ignorant of many things
which interest his fellow-creatures. We gain a good deal of knowledge
through the atmosphere; we learn a great deal by accidental hearsay,
provided we have the mordant in our own consciousness which makes the
wise remark, the significant fact, the instructive incident, take hold
upon it. After the stage of despair comes the period of consolation. We
soon find that we are not so much worse off than most of our neighbors as
we supposed. The fractional value of the wisest shows a small numerator
divided by an infinite denominator of knowledge.

I made some explanations to The Teacups, the other evening, which they
received very intelligently and graciously, as I have no doubt the
readers of these reports of mine will receive them. If the reader will
turn back to the end of the fourth number of these papers, he will find
certain lines entitled, "Cacoethes Scribendi." They were said to have
been taken from the usual receptacle of the verses which are contributed
by The Teacups, and, though the fact was not mentioned, were of my own
composition. I found them in manuscript in my drawer, and as my subject
had naturally suggested the train of thought they carried out into
extravagance, I printed them. At the same time t