upidity they utter
to-day salves the recollection of the stupidity I uttered yesterday; in
their want of wit I see my own, and so feel satisfied and kindly
disposed. It is one of the charitable dispensations of Providence that
perfection is not essential to friendship. If I had to seek my perfect
man, I should wander the world a good while, and when I found him, and
was down on my knees before him, he would, to a certainty, turn the cold
shoulder on me--and so life would be an eternal search, broken by the
coldness of repulse and loneliness. Only to the perfect being in an
imperfect world, or the imperfect being in a perfect world, is everything
irretrievably out of joint.

On a certain shelf in the bookcase which stands in the room in which I am
at present sitting--bookcase surmounted by a white Dante, looking out
with blind, majestic eyes--are collected a number of volumes which look
somewhat the worse for wear. Those of them which originally possessed
gilding have had it fingered off, each of them has leaves turned down,
and they open of themselves at places wherein I have been happy, and with
whose every word I am familiar as with the furniture of the room in which
I nightly slumber, each of them has remarks relevant and irrelevant
scribbled on their margins. These favourite volumes cannot be called
peculiar glories of literature; but out of the world of books have I
singled them, as I have singled my intimates out of the world of men. I
am on easy terms with them, and feel that they are no higher than my
heart. Milton is not there, neither is Wordsworth; Shakspeare, if he had
written comedies only, would have been there to a certainty, but the
presence of the _five_ great tragedies,--Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, Lear,
Antony and Cleopatra--for this last should be always included among his
supreme efforts--has made me place him on the shelf where the mighty men
repose, himself the mightiest of all. Reading Milton is like dining off
gold plate in a company of kings; very splendid, very ceremonious, and
not a little appalling. Him I read but seldom, and only on high days and
festivals of the spirit. Him I never lay down without feeling my
appreciation increased for lesser men--never without the same kind of
comfort that one returning from the presence feels when he doffs
respectful attitude and dress of ceremony, and subsides into old coat,
familiar arm-chair, and slippers. After long-continued organ-music, the