" gravely suggests a rusty
Plinyite. Absolute sir, and most obsolete Roman, doubtless you never had
the luck to set eyes upon a turkey at Christmas; the poor bare _bipes
implumis_, a forked creature, waiting to be forked supererogatively; ay,
and _risibilis_ to boot, if ever all concomitants of the hearty old
festival were properly provocative of decent mirth. Thus then return we
to our muttons, and time enough, quotha: literary pundit, (whose is the
notable saying?) thy definition is bomb-proof, thy fancy unscaleable,
thy thought too deep for undermining; that notion is at the head of the
poll, a candidate approved of Truth's most open borough; for, in spite
of secretary-birds with pens stuck clerk-like behind their ears (as
useless an emblem of sinecure office as gold keys, silver, and
coronation armour)--in spite of whole flights of geese, capable enough
of saving capitols, but impotent to wield one of their own
all-conquering quills--in spite, also, (keen-eyed categorists, be to my
faults in ratiocination a little blind, for very cheerfulness,) in
spite, I say, of copying presses, manifold inditers, and automaton
artists, MAN IS A WRITING ANIMAL.

Wearily enough, you will think, have we disposed of this one definition:
but recollect, and take me for a son of leisure, an amateur tourist of
Parnassus, an idling gatherer of way-side flowers in the vale of
Thessaly, a careless, unbusied, "contemplative man," recreating himself
by gentle craft on the banks of much-poached Helicon; and if you, my
casual friend, be neither like-minded in fancy nor like-fitted in
leisure, courteously consider that we may not travel well together: at
this station let us stop, freely forgiving each other for mutual
misliking; to your books, to your business, to your fowling, to your
feasting, to your mummery, to your nunnery--go: my track lays away from
the highroad, in and out between yonder hills, among thickets, mossy
rocks, green hollows, high fern, and the tangled hair of hiding
river-gods; I meet not pedlers and bagsmen, but stumble upon fawns just
dropped, and do not scare their doting mothers; I quench not my noonday
thirst with fiery drams from a brazen tap, but, lying over the cold
brook, drink to its musical Naiades; I walk no dusty roads of a
working-day world, but flit upon the pleasant places of one made up of
holidays.

A truce to this truancy, and method be my maxim: let us for a moment
link our reasonings, and solder one st