s and recollections in their place; but at all ages there must
be days that belong to our youth, hours that will recur so long as men
forbear and women remember, and life itself exists. Perhaps the most
fashionable marriage on the _tapis_ no longer excites us very much, but
the sentiment of an Emma or an Anne Elliot comes home to some of us as
vividly as ever. It is something to have such old friends who are so
young. An Emma, blooming, without a wrinkle or a grey hair, after
twenty years' acquaintance; an Elizabeth Bennet, sprightly and charming
ever....

In the 'Roundabout Papers' there is a passage about the pen-and-ink
friends my father loved:--

'They used to call the good Sir Walter the "Wizard of the North." What
if some writer should appear who can write so _enchantingly_ that he
shall be able to call into actual life the people whom he invents? What
if Mignon, and Margaret, and Goetz von Berlichingen are alive now
(though I don't say they are visible), and Dugald Dalgetty and Ivanhoe
were to step in at that open window by the little garden yonder? Suppose
Uncas and our noble old Leather Stocking were to glide in silent?
Suppose Athos, Porthos, and Aramis should enter, with a noiseless
swagger, curling their moustaches? And dearest Amelia Booth, on Uncle
Toby's arm; and Tittlebat Titmouse with his hair dyed green; and all the
Crummles company of comedians, with the Gil Blas troop; and Sir Roger
de Coverley; and the greatest of all crazy gentlemen, the Knight of La
Mancha, with his blessed squire? I say to you, I look rather wistfully
towards the window, musing upon these people. Were any of them to enter,
I think I should not be very much frightened....'

Are not such friends as these, and others unnamed here, but who will
come unannounced to join the goodly company, creations that, like some
people, do actually make part of our existence, and make us the better
for theirs? To express some vague feelings is to stamp them. Have we any
one of us a friend in a Knight of La Mancha, a Colonel Newcome, a Sir
Roger de Coverley? They live for us even though they may have never
lived. They are, and do actually make part of our lives, one of the best
and noblest parts. To love them is like a direct communication with the
great and generous minds that conceived them.

* * * * *

It is difficult, reading the novels of succeeding generations, to
determine how much each book reflects of the