[The Editors of the ‘Atlantic’ have received so many letters of inquiry concerning the literary remains of the late Mr. Wilbur, mentioned by his colleague and successor, Rev. Jeduthun Hitchcock, in a communication from which we made some extracts in our number for February, 1863, and have been so repeatedly urged to print some part of them for the gratification of the public, that they felt it their duty at least to make some effort to satisfy so urgent a demand.  They have accordingly carefully examined the papers intrusted to them, but find most of the productions of Mr. Wilbur’s pen so fragmentary, and even chaotic, written as they are on the backs of letters in an exceedingly cramped chirography,—­here a memorandum for a sermon; there an observation of the weather; now the measurement of an extraordinary head of cabbage, and then of the cerebral capacity of some reverend brother deceased; a calm inquiry into the state of modern literature, ending in a method of detecting if milk be impoverished with water, and the amount thereof; one leaf beginning with a genealogy, to be interrupted halfway down with an entry that the brindle cow had calved,—­that any attempts at selection seemed desperate.  His only complete work, ’An Enquiry concerning the Tenth Horn of the Beast,’ even in the abstract of it given by Mr. Hitchcock, would, by a rough computation of the printers, fill five entire numbers of our journal, and as he attempts, by a new application of decimal fractions, to identify it with the Emperor Julian, seems hardly of immediate concern to the general reader.  Even the Table-Talk, though doubtless originally highly interesting in the domestic circle, is so largely made up of theological discussion and matters of local or preterite interest, that we have found it hard to extract anything that would at all satisfy expectation.  But, in order to silence further inquiry, we subjoin a few passages as illustrations of its general character.]

I think I could go near to be a perfect Christian if I were always a visitor, as I have sometimes been, at the house of some hospitable friend.  I can show a great deal of self-denial where the best of everything is urged upon me with kindly importunity.  It is not so very hard to turn the other cheek for a kiss.  And when I meditate upon the pains taken for our entertainment in this life, on the endless variety of seasons, of human character and fortune, on the costliness of the hangings and furniture of our dwelling here, I sometimes feel a singular joy in looking upon myself as God’s guest, and cannot but believe that we should all be wiser and happier, because more grateful, if we were always mindful of our privilege in this regard.  And should we not rate more cheaply any honor that men could pay us, if we remembered that every day we sat at the table of the Great King?  Yet must we not forget that we are in strictest bonds His servants also; for there is no impiety so abject as that which expects to be deadheaded (ut ita dicam) through life, and which, calling itself trust in Providence, is in reality asking Providence to trust us and taking up all our goods on false pretences.  It is a wise rule to take the world as we find it, not always to leave it so.