e the style and a temptation to filch the
jewels. The style may be very sublime, but the question is will
it suit you. Your neighbour's clothes may fit him admirably, but
on you they would hang lop-sided.

The second danger is even more fatal. A struggling tyro who makes
an inartistic attempt to adorn his discourse with the most
brilliant passages from Bossuet renders his production not only
worthless but grotesque. The man who can build a labourer's
cottage handsomely should be content; but when he attempts to
engraft upon it the turrets and pilasters of the neighbouring
mansion he covers his work not with ornament but ridicule. "Am I
then," you will ask, "to cast aside the brilliant thoughts and
happy imagery I meet in my reading?" No, I only ask you not to
use them _now_. Note them for re-reading. Cast them as nuggets
into the smelting-pot of your own brain. Trust to time and the
alchemy of thought to transmute them. Wait till these thoughts
become your thoughts. The intellect will assimilate this foreign
material and send it forth on some future occasion, palpitating
with the warm blood of natural life, to strengthen the frame-work
of your reasoning or adorn your composition with veins of natural
beauty.

[Side note: How shall I read?]

Read with a pencil and paper slip beside you, not only to jot
down arguments and illustrations, but to seize on the
inspirations that may come. The thoughts we get from books are
not at all as valuable as the train of natural ideas these books
excite. When the mind is once set going there is no knowing what
rich ore it may strike. When the brain throbs in labour with
thought struggling for birth, when the soul is full and the
imagination in flame, this is the golden moment. Each idea now
stands out clear cut as a cube of crystal, and colours of
unwonted richness are draping the fancy. Hence, at all hazards,
lay hold of this inspiration. Close the most interesting work;
leave the most fascinating society; heed neither food nor sleep
till it is secured.

For you this spirit may never breathe again. Let this moment
pass, and when you do invoke the intellect it is cold and barren,
and the heart that yesterday blazed with living fires holds
lifeless ashes now. It is not always when you have pointed your
pencils and spread the virgin page before you thought will come.
The ideas that have revolutionized the world came at times and in
places most unlooked for.

When musing on the s