horse sobered by
the cares and toils of years. And you picture fine things to yourself in
your youthful dreams. I remember a beautiful dwelling I used often to
see, as if from the brow of a great hill. I see the rich valley below,
with magnificent woods and glades, and a broad river reflecting the
sunset; and in the midst of the valley, the vast Saracenic pile, with
gilded minarets blazing in the golden light. I have since then seen many
splendid habitations, but none in the least equal to that. I cannot even
yet discard the idea that somewhere in this world there stands that
noble palace, and that some day I shall find it out. You remember also
the intense delight with which you read the books that charmed you then:
how you carried off the poem or the tale to some solitary place,--how
you sat up far into the night to read it,--how heartily you believed
in all the story, and sympathized with the people it told of. I wish I
could feel now the veneration for the man who has written a book which I
used once to feel. Oh that one could read the old volumes with the
old feeling! Perhaps you have some of them yet, and you remember the
peculiar expression of the type in which they were printed: the pages
look at you with the face of an old friend. If you were then of an
observant nature, you will understand how much of the effect of any
composition upon the human mind depends upon the printing, upon the
placing of the points, even upon the position of the sentences on the
page. A grand, high-flown, and sentimental climax ought always to
conclude at the bottom of a page. It will look ridiculous, if it ends
four or five lines down from the top of the next page. Somehow there is
a feeling as of the difference between the night before and the next
morning. It is as though the crushed ball-dress and the dishevelled
locks of the close of the evening reappeared, the same, before
breakfast. Let us have homely sense at the top of the page, pathos
at the foot of it. What a force in the bad type of the shabby little
"Childe Harold" you used to read so often! You turn it over in a grand
illustrated edition, and it seems like another poem. Let it here be
said, that occasionally you look with something like indignation on the
volume which enchained you in your boyish days. For now you have burst
the chain. And you have somewhat of the feeling of the prisoner towards
the jailer who held him in unjust bondage. What right had that bombastic
rub