the shape of butter, just as the ripe fruit is splitting, so as to fit
it for the tea-table, where it is commonly served up with cold--"

--There,--I don't want to read any more of it. You see that many of
these statements are highly improbable.--No, I shall not mention the
paper.--No, neither of them wrote it, though it reminds me of the style
of these popular writers. I think the fellow that wrote it must have
been reading some of their stories, and got them mixed up with his
history and geography. I don't suppose _he_ lies; he sells it to the
editor, who knows how many squares off "Sumatra" is. The editor, who
sells it to the public--by the way, the papers have been very
civil--haven't they?--to the--the--what d'ye call it?--"Northern
Magazine,"--isn't it?--got up by some of these Come-outers, down East,
as an organ for their local peculiarities.

* * * * *

It is a very dangerous thing for a literary man to indulge his love for
the ridiculous. People laugh _with_ him just so long as he amuses them;
but if he attempts to be serious, they must still have their laugh, and
so they laugh _at_ him. There is in addition, however, a deeper reason
for this than would at first appear. Do you know that you feel a little
superior to every man who makes you laugh, whether by making faces or
verses? Are you aware that you have a pleasant sense of patronizing him,
when you condescend so far as to let him turn somersets, literal or
literary, for your royal delight? Now if a man can only be allowed to
stand on a dais, or raised platform, and look down on his neighbor who
is exerting his talent for him, oh, it is all right!--first-rate
performance!--and all the rest of the fine phrases. But if all at once
the performer asks the gentleman to come upon the floor, and, stepping
upon the platform, begins to talk down at him,--ah, that wasn't in the
program!

I have never forgotten what happened when Sydney Smith--who, as
everybody knows, was an exceedingly sensible man, and a gentleman, every
inch of him--ventured to preach a sermon on the Duties of Royalty. The
"Quarterly," "so savage and tartly," came down upon him in the most
contemptuous style, as "a joker of jokes," a "diner-out of the first
water" in one of his own phrases; sneering at him, insulting him, as
nothing but a toady of a court, sneaking behind the anonymous, would
ever have been mean enough to do to a man of his position and genius, o