unequal to the firmamental float of the other.  Accordingly, setting out from the mote-and-pebble extreme, you find, that, up to a certain point, increasing values of thought are commonly indicated by increasing gravity, by more and more of state-paper weightiness; but beyond this the rule is reversed, and lightness becomes the sign and measure of excellence.  Bishop Butler and Richard Hooker—­especially the latter, the first book of whose “Ecclesiastical Polity” is a truly noble piece of writing—­stand, perhaps, at the head of the weighty class of writers in our language; but going beyond these to the “Areopagitica” of Milton, or even to the powerful prose of Raleigh, you pass the boundary-line, and are touched with the buoyant influences of the Muse.  Shakspeare and Plato are lighter than levity; they are lifting forces, and weigh less than nothing.  The novelette of the season, or any finest and flimsiest gossamer that is fabricated in our literary looms, compares with “Lear,” with “Prometheus Bound,” with any supreme work, only as cobwebs and thistle-down, that are easily borne by the breeze, may compare with sparrows and thrushes, that can fly and withal sing.

There is a call for “light reading,” and I for one applaud the demand.  A lightening influence is the best that books or men can bestow upon us.  Information is good, but invigoration is a thousand times better.  Cheer, cheer and vigor for the world’s heart!  It is because man’s hope is so low, and his imaginations so poor, that he is earthly and evil.  Wings for these unfledged hearts!  Transformation for these grubs!  Give us animation, inspiration, joy, faith!  Give us enlivening, lightsome airs, to which our souls shall, on a sudden, begin to dance, keeping step with the angels!  What else is worth having?  Each one of these sordid sons of men—­is he not a new-born Apollo, who waits only for the ambrosia from Olympus, to spring forth in divineness of beauty and strength?

Nevertheless, I know not of any reading so hopelessly heavy as large portions of that which claims the name of light.  Light writing it may be; but, considered as reading, one would be unjust to charge upon it any lack of avoirdupois.  It is like the bran of wheat, which, though of little weight in the barrel, is heavy enough in the stomach,—­Dr. Sylvester Graham to the contrary notwithstanding.  It is related of an Italian culprit, that, being required, in punishment of his crime, to make choice between lying in prison for a term of years and reading the history of Guicciardini, he chose the latter, but, after a brief trial, petitioned for leave to reverse his election.  I never attempted Guicciardini; but I did once attempt Pope’s “Dunciad.”  And was it really the doom of a generation of readers to find delight in this book?  One must suppose so.  There are those in our day whose hard fate it is to read and to like James’s and Bulwer’s novels.  But greatly mistaken is the scholar who, for relief from severe studies, goes to an empty or insincere book.  It is like saying money, after large and worthy expenditures, by purchasing at a low price that which is worth nothing,—­buying “gold” watches at a mock-auction room.