ilton: I do not say that I think Mr.
Helps the greater man, but that I feel he suits me better. I value the
"Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table" more highly than all the writings of
Shelley put together. It is a curious thing to read various reviews of
the same book,--particularly if it be one of those books which, if you
like at all, you will like very much, and which, if you don't like,
you will absolutely hate. It is curious to find opinions flatly
contradictory of one another set forth in those reviews by very able,
cultivated, and unprejudiced men. There is no newspaper published in
Britain which contains abler writing than the "Edinburgh Scotsman." And
of course no one need say anything as to the literary merits of the
"Times." Well, one day within the last few months, the "Times" and the
"Scotsman" each published a somewhat elaborate review of a certain book.
The reviews were flatly opposed to one another; they had no common
ground at all; one said the book was extremely good, and the other that
it was extremely bad. You must just make up your mind that in matters of
taste there can be no unvarying standard of truth. In aesthetic matters,
truth is quite relative. What is bad to you is good to me, perhaps. And
indeed, if one might adduce the saddest of all possible proofs how even
the loftiest and most splendid genius fails to commend itself to every
cultivated mind, it may suffice to say, that that brilliant "Scotsman"
has on several occasions found fault with the works of A.K.H.B.!

If you, my reader, are a wise and kind-hearted person, (as I have no
doubt whatever but you are,) I think you would like very much to meet
and converse with any person who has formed a bad opinion of you. You
would take great pleasure in overcoming such a one's prejudice against
you; and if the person were an honest and worthy person, you would be
almost certain to do so. Very few folk are able to retain any bitter
feeling towards a man they have actually talked with, unless the bitter
feeling be one which is just. And a very great proportion of all the
unfavorable opinions which men entertain of their fellow-men found on
some misconception. You take up somehow an impression that such a one is
a conceited, stuck-up person: you come to know him, and you find he is
the frankest and most unaffected of men. You had a belief that such
another was a cynical, heartless being, till you met him one day coming
down a long black stair, in a poor pa