the present volume. Sir Joseph Banks and his sister made large bequests to
the same national establishment.--ED.]

But "men of the world," as they are emphatically distinguished, imagine
that a man so lifeless in "the world" must be one of the dead in it, and,
with mistaken wit, would inscribe over the sepulchre of his library, "Here
lies the body of our friend." If the man of letters have voluntarily
quitted their "world," at least he has passed into another, where he
enjoys a sense of existence through a long succession of ages, and where
Time, who destroys all things for others, for him only preserves and
discovers. This world is best described by one who has lingered among its
inspirations. "We are wafted into other times and strange lands,
connecting us by a sad but exalting relationship with the great events and
great minds which have passed away. Our studies at once cherish and
control the imagination, by leading it over an unbounded range of the
noblest scenes in the overawing company of departed wisdom and genius."[A]

[Footnote A: "Quarterly Review," No. xxxiii. p. 145.]

Living more with books than with men, which is often becoming better
acquainted with man himself, though not always with men, the man
of letters is more tolerant of opinions than opinionists are among
themselves. Nor are his views of human affairs contracted to the day,
like those who, in the heat and hurry of a too active life, prefer
expedients to principles; men who deem themselves politicians because they
are not moralists; to whom the centuries behind have conveyed no results,
and who cannot see how the present time is always full of the future.
"Everything," says the lively Burnet, "must be brought to the nature of
tinder or gunpowder, ready for a spark to set it on fire," before they
discover it. The man of letters indeed is accused of a cold indifference
to the interests which divide society; he is rarely observed as the head
or the "rump of a party;" he views at a distance their temporary passions
--those mighty beginnings, of which he knows the miserable terminations.

Antiquity presents the character of a perfect man of letters in ATTICUS,
who retreated from a political to a literary life. Had his letters
accompanied those of Cicero, they would have illustrated the ideal
character of his class. But the sage ATTICUS rejected a popular celebrity
for a passion not less powerful, yielding up his whole soul to study.
CICERO, with all