ovelty,
surprise, and superiority to the prejudices of the world--by being stuck
upon a pedestal, made amiable, dazzling, a _leurre de dupe_! The reliance
on solid worth which it inculcates, the preference of sober truth to gaudy
tinsel, hangs like a mill-stone round the neck of the imagination--"a load
to sink a navy"--impedes our progress, and blocks up every prospect in
life. A man, to get on, to be successful, conspicuous, applauded, should
not retire upon the centre of his conscious resources, but be always at
the circumference of appearances. He must envelop himself in a halo of
mystery--he must ride in an equipage of opinion--he must walk with a train
of self-conceit following him--he must not strip himself to a buff-jerkin,
to the doublet and hose of his real merits, but must surround himself with
a _cortege_ of prejudices, like the signs of the Zodiac--he must seem any
thing but what he is, and then he may pass for any thing he pleases. The
world love to be amused by hollow professions, to be deceived by
flattering appearances, to live in a state of hallucination; and can
forgive every thing but the plain, downright, simple honest truth--such as
we see it chalked out in the character of Emilius.--To return from this
digression, which is a little out of place here.

Books have in a great measure lost their power over me; nor can I revive
the same interest in them as formerly. I perceive when a thing is good,
rather than feel it. It is true,

Marcian Colonna is a dainty book;

and the reading of Mr. Keats's Eve of St. Agnes lately made me regret that
I was not young again. The beautiful and tender images there conjured up,
"come like shadows--so depart." The "tiger-moth's wings," which he has
spread over his rich poetic blazonry, just flit across my fancy; the
gorgeous twilight window which he has painted over again in his verse, to
me "blushes" almost in vain "with blood of queens and kings." I know how I
should have felt at one time in reading such passages; and that is all.
The sharp luscious flavour, the fine _aroma_ is fled, and nothing but the
stalk, the bran, the husk of literature is left. If any one were to ask me
what I read now, I might answer with my Lord Hamlet in the play--"Words,
words, words."--"What is the matter?"--"_Nothing!_"--They have scarce a
meaning. But it was not always so. There was a time when to my thinking,
every word was a flower or a pearl, like those which dropped from the
mou