pure Malaga? Take away the candle from the smoking
man; by the glimmering of the left ashes, he knows that he is still
smoking, but he knows it only by an inference; till the restored
light, coming in aid of the olfactories, reveals to both senses the
full aroma. Then how he redoubles his puffs! how he burnishes!--There
is absolutely no such thing as reading, but by a candle. We have
tried the affectation of a book at noon-day in gardens, and in sultry
arbours; but it was labour thrown away. Those gay motes in the beam
come about you, hovering and teazing, like so many coquets, that will
have you all to their self, and are jealous of your abstractions. By
the midnight taper, the writer digests his meditations. By the same
light, we must approach to their perusal, if we would catch the flame,
the odour. It is a mockery, all that is reported of the influential
Phoebus. No true poem ever owed its birth to the sun's light. They are
abstracted works--

"Things that were born, when none but the still night,
And his dumb candle, saw his pinching throes."

Marry, daylight--daylight might furnish the images, the crude
material; but for the fine shapings, the true turning and filing (as
mine author hath it), they must be content to hold their inspiration
of the candle. The mild internal light, that reveals them, like fires
on the domestic hearth, goes out in the sunshine. Night and silence
call out the starry fancies, Milton's Morning Hymn on Paradise, we
would hold a good wager, was penned at midnight; and Taylor's richer
description of a sun-rise smells decidedly of the taper. Even ourself,
in these our humbler lucubrations, tune our best measured cadences
(Prose has her cadences) not unfrequently to the charm of the drowsier
watchman, "blessing the doors;" or the wild sweep of winds at
midnight. Even now a loftier speculation than we have yet attempted,
courts our endeavours. We would indite something about the Solar
System.--_Betty, bring the candles_.

XVI.--THAT A SULKY TEMPER IS A MISFORTUNE

We grant that it is, and a very serious one--to a man's friends, and
to all that have to do with him; but whether the condition of the man
himself is so much to be deplored, may admit of a question. We can
speak a little to it, being ourself but lately recovered--we whisper
it in confidence, reader--out of a long and desperate fit of the
sullens. Was the cure a blessing? The conviction which wrought it,
came too clearly to