might heretofore have ripened into authorship; nay, more, perhaps may
still: believe, generously, that if I could coil off quietly, like
unwrapped cocoons, all these epics, tragics, theologies, pathetics,
analytics, and didactics, they would show in fairer forms, and
better-defined proportions: believe, also, truly, that I could, if I
would, and that I would, if the game were worth its candle.

But, sooth to say, the over-gorged public may well regard that
small-tomed author with most favourable eye, who condenses himself
within the narrowest limits; a _diable boiteux_, not the huge spirit of
the Hartz; concentrated meat-lozenges, not _soup maigre_; pocket-pistols
of literature, not lumbering parks of its artillery. Verily, there is a
mightier mass of typography than of readers; and the reading world, from
very brevity of life, must rush, at a Bedouin pace, over the illimitable
plains of newspaper publication, while the pyramids of dusty folio are
left to stand in solitary proud neglect. The cursory railroad spirit is
abroad: we abhor that old painful ploughing through axle-deep ruts: the
friend who will skate with us, is welcomer than he who holds us freezing
by the button; and the teacher, who suggestively bounds in his balloon
on the tops of a chain of arguments, is more popular in lecturing than
he of the old school, who must duteously and laboriously struggle up and
down those airy promontories.

I love an avenue, though, like Lord Ashburton's magnificent mile of
yew-trees, it may lead to nothing, and therefore have not expunged this
unnecessary preface: rather, will I bluntly come upon a next subject,
another work in my unseen circulating library,

THE SEVEN SAYINGS OF GRECIAN WISDOM,

ILLUSTRATED IN SEVEN TALES.

Cordially may this theme be commended to the more illuminating
booksellers: well would it be greeted by the picture-loving public. It
might come out from time to time as a periodical, in a classical
wrapper: might be decorated with the sages' physiognomies, copied from
antique gems, with the fancied passage in each one's life that provoked
the saying, and with specific illustrations of the exemplifying story.
There should be a brilliant preface, introducing the seven sages to each
other and the reader, after the ensample of Plutarch, and exhausting all
the antiquarianism, all the memoirism, and all the varia-lectionism of
the subject. The different tales should be of different countries and
ages o