hich you
have a like happy facility in finding every proposition stated with its
stern forward, as sailors say, or in some other grotesque mismanagement
of composition. There are no better farces on or off the stage than when
two or three congenial spirits ransack books of this kind, and compete
with each other in taking fun out of them.

[Footnote 49: "In this catalogue of _books which are no books--biblia a
biblia_--I reckon court calendars, directories, pocket-books,
draught-boards bound and lettered on the back, scientific treatises,
almanacs, statutes at large; the works of Hume, Gibbon, Robertson,
Beattie, Soame Jenyns, and generally all those volumes which 'no
gentleman's library should be without;' the histories of Flavius
Josephus (that learned Jew) and Paley's Moral Philosophy. With these
exceptions, I can read almost anything. I bless my stars for a taste so
catholic, so unexcluding. I confess that it moves my spleen to see these
_things in books' clothing_ perched upon shelves, like false saints,
usurpers of true shrines, intruders into the sanctuary, thrusting out
the legitimate occupants. To reach down a well-bound semblance of a
volume, and hope it some kind-hearted play-book, then, opening what
'seem its leaves,' to come bolt upon a withering population essay. To
expect a Steele, or a Farquhar, and find--Adam Smith. To view a
well-arranged assortment of block-headed encyclopaedias (Anglicanas or
Metropolitanas) set out in an array of russia or morocco, when a tithe
of that good leather would comfortably reclothe my shivering folios,
would renovate Paracelsus himself, and enable old Raymund Lully to look
like himself again in the world. I never see these impostors but I long
to strip them, to warm my ragged veterans in their spoils."--Essays of
Elia.]

There is a solid volume, written in an inquiring spirit, but in a manner
which reminds one of deep calling unto deep, about the dark
superstitions of a country which was once a separate European kingdom. I
feel a peculiar interest in it, from the author having informed me, by
way of communicating an important fact in literary history, and also as
an example to be followed by literary aspirants, that, before committing
the book to the press, he had written it over sixteen times. It would
have been valuable to have his first manuscript, were it only that one
might form some idea of the steps by which he had brought it into the
condition in which it was prin