ty school-children all squeaking their slate pencils down
their slates together,--who does not remember that blood-curdling
music of his youth?--one might gain some feeble notion of the acute
agony induced by such an instrument of torture. Agony to the nervous
visitor alone; for the inhabitants of Amboise love their shrieking
saws and currycombs, just as they love their shrieking parrots and
cockatoos. They gather in happy crowds to watch the blue-sashed boy,
and drink in the noise he makes. We drink it in, too, as he is
immediately beneath our windows. Then we look at the castle walls
glowing in the splendour of the sunset, and at the Loire sweeping
in magnificent curves between the grey-green poplar trees; at the
noble width of the horizon, and at the deepening tints of the sky;
and we realize that a silent Amboise would be an earthly Paradise,
too fair for this sinful world.

The Chill of Enthusiasm

"Surtout, pas de zele."--TALLEYRAND.

There is no aloofness so forlorn as our aloofness from an
uncontagious enthusiasm, and there is no hostility so sharp as that
aroused by a fervour which fails of response. Charles Lamb's "D--n
him at a hazard," was the expression of a natural and reasonable frame
of mind with which we are all familiar, and which, though admittedly
unlovely, is in the nature of a safeguard. If we had no spiritual
asbestos to protect our souls, we should be consumed to no purpose
by every wanton flame. If our sincere and restful indifference to
things which concern us not were shaken by every blast, we should
have no available force for things which concern us deeply. If
eloquence did not sometimes make us yawn, we should be besotted by
oratory. And if we did not approach new acquaintances, new authors,
and new points of view with life-saving reluctance, we should never
feel that vital regard which, being strong enough to break down our
barriers, is strong enough to hold us for life.

The worth of admiration is, after all, in proportion to the value
of the thing admired,--a circumstance overlooked by the people who
talk much pleasant nonsense about sympathy, and the courage of our
emotions, and the open and generous mind. We know how Mr. Arnold felt
when an American lady wrote to him, in praise of American authors,
and said that it rejoiced her heart to think of such excellence as
being "common and abundant." Mr. Arnold, who considered that
excellence of any kind was very uncommon and beyo