axes the tension
of the powers without rendering them unfit for future exercise? I should
not be surprised to see these observations refuted; and I shall not be
sorry if they are so. I feel personally little interest in the question.
If my life be a life of literature, it shall certainly be one of
literature directed to moral ends.

At all events let us be consistent. I was amused in turning over an old
volume of the Christian Observer to find a gentleman signing himself
Excubitor, (one of our antagonists in the question of novel-reading,)
after a very pious argument on the hostility of novels to a religious
frame of mind, proceeding to observe that he was shocked to hear a
young lady who had displayed extraordinary knowledge of modern ephemeral
literature own herself ignorant of Dryden's fables! Consistency with
a vengeance! The reading of modern poetry and novels excites a worldly
disposition and prevents ladies from reading Dryden's fables! There is a
general disposition among the more literary part of the religious world
to cry down the elegant literature of our own times, while they are
not in the slightest degree shocked at atrocious profaneness or gross
indelicacy when a hundred years have stamped them with the title
of classical. I say: "If you read Dryden you can have no reasonable
objection to reading Scott." The strict antagonist of ephemeral reading
exclaims, "Not so. Scott's poems are very pernicious. They call away the
mind from spiritual religion, and from Tancred and Sigismunda." But I
am exceeding all ordinary limits. If these hasty remarks fatigue you,
impute it to my desire of justifying myself from a charge which I should
be sorry to incur with justice. Love to all at home.

Affectionately yours,

T. B. M.

With or without a moral, the poem carried the day. The subject for the
next year was Waterloo. The opening lines of Macaulay's exercise
were pretty and simple enough to ruin his chance in an academical
competition.

It was the Sabbath morn. How calm and fair
Is the blest dawning of the day of prayer!
Who hath not felt how fancy's mystic power
With holier beauty decks that solemn hour;
A softer lustre in its sunshine sees;
And hears a softer music in its breeze?
Who hath not dreamed that even the skylark's throat
Hails that sweet morning with a gentler note?
Fair morn, how gaily shone thy dawning smile
On the green valleys of my native isle!
How gladly many a spire's resounding