progress, he would now and then walk rapidly up
and down the room, talking wildly to himself. "If it be _Punch_ copy,
you shall hear him laugh presently as he hits upon a droll bit." And
then, abruptly, the pen would be put down, and the author would pass
out into the garden, and pluck a hawthorn leaf, and go, nibbling it and
thinking, down the side walks; then "in again, and vehemently to work,"
unrolling the thought that had come to him along little blue slips of
paper, in letters smaller than the type in which they were presently to
be set.

Dr. Channing had the same habit of taking a turn in the garden, during
which he was a study for the calm concentration of his look, and the
deliberateness of his step: "Calmer, brighter, in a few moments he is
seated again at his table, and his rapidly flying pen shows how full is
the current of his thoughts."

Jane Taylor, who commenced authorship as a very little girl indeed, and
who used at that early stage to compose tales and dramas while whipping
a top,--committing them to paper at the close of that exercise,--was in
the habit, her brother Isaac tells us, of rambling for half an hour
after breakfast, "to seek that pitch of excitement without which she
never took up the pen."

Of Dickens we are told that "some quaint little bronze figures on his
desk were as much needed for the easy flow of his writing as blue ink or
quill pens."

Emanuel Kant, the philosopher, lived the life of a student; in fact, his
life may be taken as the type of that of a scholar. Kant, like Balzac,
gave a daily dinner-party; but when his guests were gone he took a walk
in the country instead of seeking broken slumbers in a state of hunger.
He came home at twilight, and read from candle-light till bedtime at
ten. He arose punctually at five, and, over one cup of tea and part of a
pipe, laid out his plan of work for the day. At seven he lectured, and
wrote till dinner-time at about one. The regularity of his life was
automatic. He regulated his diet with the care of a physician. During
the blind-man's holiday between his walk and candle-light he sat down to
think in twilight fashion; and while thus engaged, he always placed
himself so that his eyes might fall on a certain old tower. This old
tower became so necessary to his thoughts that, when some poplar trees
grew up and hid it from his sight, he found himself unable to think at
all, until, at his earnest request, the trees were cropped and the t