earliest Bowers of the freshly created earth. Imaginative strewed the sptial conch of Ere. Not Ariel, nor Caliban. nor Witches who reisd the elements. But Eve and Satan and Promethens, are the most wondrous and the most glorions of her works. Imagination takes the weaker hand of Virgil out of Dante's who grasps it, and guides the Plorentine exile through the triple world.

Archdeacon Hare. Whatever be your enthusiasm for the great old masters, you must often feel, if less of so strong an impulse, yet a cordial self-congratulation in having bestowed so many eulogies on poetical contemporaries, and on others whose genius is apart from poetry.

Indeed I do.

Walter Landor. Indeed I do. Every meed of Justice is delivered out of her own full scale. The poets, and others who may rank with them,-indeed, all the great men,have borne toward me somewhat more than civility. The few rudenesses I have ever heard of are from such as neither I nor you ever meet in society, and such as warm their fingers and stomachs round less ornamental hearths.

When they to whom we have been unknown, or indifferent, begin to speak a little well of us, we are sure to find some honest old friend ready to trim the balance. I have had occasion to smile at this.

Archdeacon Hare. We sometimes stumble upon sly invidiousness and smoldering malignity, quite unexpectedly, and in places which we should have believed, were above the influence of such malaria. When Prosperity pays to Wisdom her visit in state, would we not, rather than halloo the yard-dog against her, clear the way for her, and adorn the door with garlands? How fond are people in general of clinging to a greating man's foibles!—they can climb no higher. It is not the solid, it is the carious, that grubs feed upon.

Our

Waller Landor. The practice of barring out the master is still continued in the world's great schoolroom. sturdy boys do not fear a flogging: they fear only a book or a lecture.

Archdeacon Hare. Authors are like cattle going to a fair those of the same field can never move on without butting one another.

Walter Landor. It has been my fortune and felicity, from my earliest days to have avoided all competitions. My tutor at Oxford could never persuade me to write a piece of Latin poetry for the prize, earnest as he was that his pupil should be a winner at the forthcoming ENCONIA. Poetry was always my amusement; prose, my study and business. I have published five volumes of "Imaginary Conversations": cut the worst of them through the middle, and there will remain in this decimal fraction quite enough to satisfy my appetite for fame. I shall dine late; but the dining-room will be well lighted, the guests few and select.

In this age of discovery it may haply be discovered who first among our Cisalpine nations led Greek to converse like Greek, Roman like Roman, in poetry or prose. Gentlemen of fashion have patronized them occasionally,have taken them under the arm, have recommended their own tailor, their own perfumer, and have lighted a cigar for them from their own at the door of the TRAVELER's or ATHENÆUM: there they parted.

Archdeacon Hare. Before we go into the house again, let me revert to what you seem to have forgotten, the hasty and inaccurate remarks on Gebir."

Walter Landor. It is hardly worth our while. Evidently they were written by a very young person, who, with a little encouragement, and induced to place his confidence in somewhat safer investment than himself, may presently do better things.

Archdeacon Hare. Southey too, I remember, calls the poem in some parts obscure.

Walter Landor. It must be, if Southey found it so. I never thought of asking him where lies the obscurity; I would have attempted to correct whatever he disapproved.

Archdeacon Hare. He himself, the clearest of writers, professes that he imitated your versification; and the style of his "Colloquies" is in some degree modified by yours. Walter Landor. Little cause had he for preferring any other to his own.

Perhaps the indictum ore alio is my obscurity. Goethe is acknowledged by his highest admirers to be obscure in

Epictetus. I thank God for it. Those rude instruments have left the turf lying yet toward the sun; and those unskillful hands have plucked out the docks.

Seneca. We hope and believe that we have attained a vein of eloquence, brighter and more varied than has been hitherto laid open to the world.

Epictetus. Than any in the Greek?

Seneca. We trust so.

Epictetus. Than your Cicero's?

Seneca. If the declaration may be made without an offense to modesty. Surely, you cannot estimate or value the eloquence of that noble pleader?

Epictetus. Imperfectly, not being born in Italy; and the noble pleader is a much less man with me than the noble philosopher. I regret that, having farms and villas, he would not keep his distance from the pumping up of foul words against thieves, cutthroats, and other rogues; and that he lied, sweated, and thumped his head and thighs, in behalf of those who were no better.

Seneca. Senators must have clients, and must protect them.

Epictetus. If it becomes a philosopher to regret at all, and if I regret what is and might not be, I may regret more what both is and must be. However, it is an amiable thing, and no small merit in the wealthy, even to trifle and play at their leisure hours with philosophy. It cannot be expected that such a personage should espouse her, or should recommend her as an inseparable mate to his heir. Seneca. I would.

Epictetus. Yes, Seneca, but thou hast no son to make the match for; and thy recommendation, I suspect, would be given him before he could consummate the marriage. Every man wishes his sons to be philosophers while they are young; but takes especial care, as they grow older, to teach them its insufficiency and unfitness for their intercourse with mankind. The paternal voice says, "You must not be particular; you are about to have a profession to live by follow those who have thriven the best in it."