e seeking an introduction, let us say, into the
literary society of Johnson, or the fashionable society of Walpole.
Society, dead or alive, can have no charm without intimacy, and no
intimacy without interest in trifles which I fear Mr. Harrison would
describe as "merely curious." If we would feel at our ease in any
company, if we wish to find humor in its jokes, and point in its
repartees, we must know something of the beliefs and the prejudices of
its various members, their loves and their hates, their hopes and their
fears, their maladies, their marriages, and their flirtations. If these
things are beneath our notice, we shall not be the less qualified to
serve our Queen and country, but need make no attempt to extract
pleasure from one of the most delightful departments of literature.

That there is such a thing as trifling information I do not of course
question; but the frame of mind in which the reader is constantly
weighing the exact importance to the universe at large of each
circumstance which the author presents to his notice, is not one
conducive to the true enjoyment of a picture whose effect depends upon a
multitude of slight and seemingly insignificant touches, which impress
the mind often without remaining in the memory. The best method of
guarding against the danger of reading what is useless is to read only
what is interesting; a truth which will seem a paradox to a whole class
of readers, fitting objects of our commiseration, who may be often
recognized by their habit of asking some adviser for a list of books,
and then marking out a scheme of study in the course of which all are to
be conscientiously perused. These unfortunate persons apparently read a
book principally with the object of getting to the end of it. They reach
the word _Finis_ with the same sensation of triumph as an Indian feels
who strings a fresh scalp to his girdle. They are not happy unless they
mark by some definite performance each step in the weary path of
self-improvement. To begin a volume and not to finish it would be to
deprive themselves of this satisfaction; it would be to lose all the
reward of their earlier self-denial by a lapse from virtue at the end.
To skip, according to their literary code, is a species of cheating; it
is a mode of obtaining credit for erudition on false pretenses; a plan
by which the advantages of learning are surreptitiously obtained by
those who have not won them by honest toil. But all this is qu