* * * * *

“‘We read the “Paradise Lost” as a task,’ says Dr. Johnson.  Nay, rather as a celestial recreation, of which the dullard mind is not at all hours alike recipient.  ’Nobody ever wished it longer’;—­nor the moon rounder, he might have added.  Why, ’tis the perfectness and completeness of it which makes us imagine that not a line could be added to it, or diminished from it, with advantage.  Would we have a cubit added to the stature of the Medicean Venus?  Do we wish her taller?”

* * * * *

“Amidst the complaints of the wide spread of infidelity among us, it is consolatory that a sect is sprung up in the heart of the metropolis, and is daily on the increase, of teachers of that healing doctrine which Pope upheld, and against which Voltaire directed his envenomed wit.  We mean those practical preachers of Optimism, or the belief that Whatever is best, the cads of omnibuses, who, from their little back pulpits, not once in three or four hours, as those proclaimers of ’God and His prophet’ in Mussulman countries, but every minute, at the entry or exit of a brief passenger, are heard, in an almost prophetic tone, to exclaim, (Wisdom crying out, as it were, in the streets,) ’All’s right!’”

* * * * *

“Advice is not so commonly thrown away as is imagined.  We seek it in difficulties.  But, in common speech, we are apt to confound with it admonition: as when a friend reminds one that drink is prejudicial to the health, etc.  We do not care to be told of that which we know better than the good man that admonishes.  M——­ sent to his friend L——­, who is no water-drinker, a two-penny tract ’Against the Use of Fermented Liquors.’  L——­ acknowledged the obligation, as far as to twopence.  Penotier’s advice was the safest, after all:—­

“’I advised him’—­

“But I must tell you.  The dear, good-meaning, no-thinking creature had been dumbfounding a company of us with a detail of inextricable difficulties in which the circumstances of an acquaintance of his were involved.  No clue of light offered itself.  He grew more and more misty as he proceeded.  We pitied his friend, and thought,—­

  “’God help the man so wrapt in error’s endless
  maze!’

“when, suddenly brightening up his placid countenance, like one that had found out a riddle, and looked to have the solution admired,—­

“‘At last,’ said he, ’I advised him’—­

“Here he paused, and here we were again interminably thrown back.  By no possible guess could any of us aim at the drift of the meaning he was about to be delivered of.

“‘I advised him,’ he repeated, ‘to have some advice upon the subject.’

“A general approbation followed; and it was unanimously agreed, that, under all the circumstances of the case, no sounder or more judicious counsel could have been given.”