as it can be said of any
men, they did the best that was possible with their circumstances and
endowments. The old fancy which says of every person, that there is an
ideal character which he can attain, in which he shall be peculiar and
unsurpassed, was in their cases realized.

Their characters were projected into literature, where they remain as
permanent blessings. The style of writing of both of them approaches to
the simplest way of saying things. Elia employed the choicest language
of the seventeenth century, and the divine used the plainest English of
the day. The perpetual danger of literature is of becoming rhetorical;
and hardly fares vigor of thought when long words and periods are
preferred to short ones, and when the native shape and properties of
ideas are less cared for than the abundant drapery. The style of the
"Essays of Elia" is as admirable as their fancy. The author hated a
formal sentence as much as he disliked stately and insipid society.
Unlike Thomas Carlyle, in avoiding the faults of rhetorical culture, he
did not become a literary barbarian. In refusing to comb his hair like a
prig, he did not go to the extreme of making himself horridly uncomely.
His sentences are unsurpassed for neatness, are as graceful as they are
quaint and clear. The writings of Sydney Smith rarely attain the
perfect grace which uniformly distinguishes Elia; yet he never attempts
magnificence, and he so unites brilliancy and plainness as to make his
statements seem equally felicitous to the rude and the scholarly ear.
His Peter Plymley letters are remarkable examples of the way in which
one yeoman speaks to another. His literary bequest, however, is neither
so valuable nor so charming as that of Charles Lamb. His powers were too
various, and he engaged in too many fields of labor, to attain supreme
success in any direction. The best result of his life is his own
exuberant and unresting character, which harmonized all the diversities
in his career; and adequately to behold this there is needed a fuller
and more philosophical biography of him than has yet been written.

BULLS AND BEARS.

[Continued.]

CHAPTER XV.

On the morning of the day which brought the downfall of Stearine and his
indorsers, Sandford and Fayerweather, with the Vortex, whose funds
they had misappropriated, Monroe came to the counting-room unusually
cheerful. His anxiety respecting his little property was relieved, for
he thought the mo