characteristics of
places, ranks, habits of life, are transfigured for him, even now and in
advance of time, by poetic light; justifying what some might condemn as
mere sentimentality, in the effort to hand on unbroken the tradition of
such fashion or accent. "The praise of beggars," "the cries of London,"
the traits of actors just grown "old," the spots in "town" where the
country, its fresh green and fresh water, still lingered on, one after
another, amidst the bustle; the quaint, dimmed, just played-out farces,
he had relished so much, coming partly through them to understand the
earlier English theatre as a thing once really alive; those fountains
and sundials of old gardens, of which he entertains such dainty
discourse:--he feels the poetry of these things, as the poetry of things
old indeed, but surviving as an actual part of the life of the present,
and as something quite different from the poetry of things flatly gone
from us and antique, which come back to us, if at all, as entire
strangers, like Scott's old Scotch-border personages, their oaths and
armour. Such gift of appreciation depends, as I said, on the habitual
apprehension of men's life as a whole--its organic wholeness, as
extending even to the least things in it--of its outward manner in
connection with its inward temper; and it involves a fine perception of
the congruities, the musical accordance between humanity and its
environment of custom, society, personal intercourse; as if all this,
with its meetings, partings, ceremonies, gesture, tones of speech, were
some delicate instrument on which an expert performer is playing.

These are some of the characteristics of Elia, one essentially an
essayist, and of the true family of Montaigne, "never judging," as he
says, "system-wise of things, but fastening on particulars;" saying all
things as it were on chance occasion only, and by way of pastime, yet
succeeding thus, "glimpse-wise," in catching and recording more
frequently than others "the gayest, happiest attitude of things;" a
casual writer for dreamy readers, yet always giving the reader so much
more than he seemed to propose. There is something of the follower of
George Fox about him, and the Quaker's belief in the inward light coming
to one passive, to the mere wayfarer, who will be sure at all events to
lose no light which falls by the way--glimpses, suggestions, delightful
half-apprehensions, profound thoughts of old philosophers, hints of the