endants of Procustes, that the quality of humor is
not strained, but droppeth as the gentle dew from heaven; and if, after
patient blending with grains of intolerance and egotism, in the mortar
of your minds, it seems to you but that poisonous foam that of old
sorcerers drew, by their incantations, from the moon, we can only smile
with Voltaire at your 'foolish ingenuities,' and recommend to you a new
career. 'Go pype in an ivy lefe,' Monsieur Mustard-seed, or 'blow the
bukkes' horne.'

It is no trifling merit in a work of so extraordinary a character that
the original programme should have been so perfectly carried out. The
poet never relaxes, even into a Corinthian elegance of allusion; his
metaphors are always fresh and ungarnished; they no more shine with the
polish of the court than do those of Panurge. In fact, there is a flavor
of the camp about them, a pleasant suspicion, and more than a suspicion,
of life in the open air, the fresh smell of the up-turned earth, the
odor of clover blossoms. The poet is walking in the _fresco_, and the
sharp winds cut a pathway across every page. Equally remarkable and
pervaded by a most delightful personality are the editorial lucubrations
of the Rev. Homer Wilbur. The very lustre of the midnight oil shines
upon their glittering fragments of philosophy, admirably twisted to suit
the requirements of an eminently unphilosophical age; moral axioms from
heathen writers applied judiciously to the immoral actions of Christian
doers; distorted shadows of a monstrous political economy, and
dispassionate and highly commendable views '_de propaganda fide_.' Like
Johnson,

'He forced Latinisms into his line,
Like raw undrilled recruits,'

that have yet done immense service in his conflicts with the enemy. This
pedantry, so inimitable, is unequaled even by the most weighty pages of
the 'Pseudodoxia Epidemica' of Sir Thomas Browne. That it should prove
obnoxious to some critics only testifies to its perfection and their own
incapacity for enjoyment. If a man does not relish the caviare and
truffles at a dinner, he does not question the wisdom of his Lucullus in
providing them; the fault is in his own palate, not in the judgment of
his host. The aggrieved individuals, who are either too weak or too
indolent to scale the numberless peaks of Lowell's genius, may comfort
themselves with the reflection that the treasures of their minds will
never be tesselated into the mosaic of any satiri