eing. And still they stand apart! Alive to praise, and needing its
inspiration, their relations are those of icebergs,--cold, stiff, lofty,
and freezing. What infatuation is this! They should seek each other out,
extend the hand of fellowship, and bridge the distance between them by
elaborate courtesies and kindly recognitions.

AN AUTHOR'S FIRST BOOK.

No man is a competent judge of what he himself does. An author, on the
eve of his first publication, and while his book is going through the
press, is in a predicament like that of a man mounted on a fence, with
an ugly bull in the field that he is obliged to cross. The apprehended
silence of the journals concerning his merits--for no notice is the
worst notice--constitutes one of the "horns of his dilemma"; while their
possibly invidious comments upon his want of them constitute another and
equally formidable "horn." Between these, and the uncertainty as to
whether he will not in a little time be cut by one-half of his
acquaintances and only indulgently tolerated by the other half, his
experience is apt to be very peculiar, and certainly not altogether
agreeable. Never, therefore, envy an author his feelings on such an
occasion, on the score of their superior enjoyment, but rather let him
be visited with your softest pity and tenderest commiseration.

BOOKS.

A book is only a very partial expression of its author. The writer is
greater than his work; and there is in him the substance, not of one, or
a few, but of many books, were they only written out.

CAUSE AND EFFECT.

Small circumstances illustrate great principles. To-day my dinner cost
me sixpence less than usual. This is an incident not quite so important
as some others recorded in history, but the causes of it originated more
than two thousand years ago. It will also serve to explain the
principle, that causes are primary and secondary, remote and
immediate,--and that historians, when they speak of certain effects as
produced by certain causes. Socrates one day had a conversation with
Aristippus, in which he threw out certain remarks on the subject of
temperance. Being overheard by Xenophon, they were subsequently
committed to writing and published by him. These, falling in my way last
evening, made such an impression on my mind, that I was induced to-day
to forego my customary piece of pudding after dinner, to the loss of the
eating-house proprietor, whose receipts were thus diminished, first, by
a