e said it to Meg Merrilies, but rather to Miss
Julia Mannering, when he was confounded with her vivacity. What! two
letters to my one! I do believe you are going to be literary.

And then,--was ever seen such an ambitious woman! Reading Mill, and
going to read Herbert Spencer! And I suppose Kant will come next.
But bravo! I say. I am very much pleased with you. And don't say, "I
wish,--but what 's the use!" You are through with the great absorbing
mother's cares, and can undertake studies, and I believe there is no
study so worthy of our attention as our literature. I confess that I
have come [289] to a somewhat new thought of this matter of late. What
is there on the earth upon which we stand,--what is there that offers to
help us, to lift and build us up, that can compare with the productions
of the greatest minds which are gathered up in our literature? Whether
we would study human nature or the Nature Divine,-whether we would study
religion, science, nature in the world around us, in the life within
us,--these are the lights that shine upon our path. For those who have
time to read, it seems a deplorable mistake not to turn their thoughts
distinctly to what the greatest minds have said; that is, upon as many
subjects as they can compass.

If I were to undertake anything in the way of education, I would set up
in New York an Institute of English Literature. I do not know but--might
do something of the kind,--have a house and receive classes that
should come once or twice in a week and read in the mean time under her
direction, and teach them by reading to them, by commenting, talking,
pointing out and opening up to them the best things in the best authors,
the poets, the essayists, the historians, the fiction-writers, and thus
making them acquainted with the finest productions of the English mind;
and, what is better, inspiring them with an enthusiasm and taste for
pursuing, for reading such things, instead of sensation novels and such
stuff.

Moliere and Corneille have struck me much on this reading,--the first
with the tenuity of his thought, the slender thread on which he weaves
his entertaining and life-like drama, making it to live through the ages
simply by sticking to nature, making his personages speak so naturally;
and the second, with the real dramatic [290] grandeur of his genius. I
feel that I have never done justice to Corneille before, I have been
so dissatisfied with the formal rhyme, the want of the