f perfumes, and likes the odorous blossoms best. He has
always had his dream of fair women, and he is a great favorite with
women of all ages. He is not averse to the pleasures of the table, and
likes plenty of friends around him, with mirth and good cheer, at his
dinner hour.

He has been accused of being somewhat aristocratic in his feelings, and
is doubtless a lover of the best society, as he interprets that
word,--not mere wealth or fashion, but good blood, generous culture
through more than one generation, and a general refinement in manners
and in thought. What he calls the Brahmin caste of New England is
doubtless very good society indeed; and who shall blame the good
Autocrat if he visits in that circle by choice? He would not, perhaps,
like the old scholar of whom he tells, give as his toast "to all the
people who on the earth do dwell," but he would select some very choice
and rare little coterie of those people, and toast them with the most
contagious enthusiasm.

That he is a man of fastidious tastes goes without saying, and rather
critical of men and women, in manners as well as morals. An acute
observer of small social phenomena, he does not deem it beneath his
dignity to criticise the man who cannot pronounce "view," and the woman,
even if it be Margaret Fuller, who says "nawvels." That he is a
sensitive man he told us long ago, and that--

"There are times
When all this fret and tumult that we hear
Do seem more stale than to the sexton's ear
His own dull chimes.

"From crib to shroud!
Nurse o'er our cradle screameth lullaby,
And friends in boots tramp round us as we die,
Snuffling aloud.

"Children with drums
Strapped round them by the fond paternal ass,
Peripatetics with a blade of grass
Between their thumbs.

"Cockneys that kill
Thin horses of a Sunday,--men with clams,
Hoarse as young bisons roaring for their dams,
From hill to hill.

"Soldiers with guns,
Making a nuisance of the blessed air,
Child-crying bellmen, children in despair,
Screeching for buns.

"Storms, thunders, waves!
Howl, crash, and bellow, till ye get your fill.
Ye sometimes rest; men never can be still
But in their graves."

Sometimes these daily trials are exaggerated to a quite unbearable
point, as in the case of Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle, who suffered intense
tortures in later life from the ordinar