line.  I am speaking of Protestants; how it may be among Roman Catholics I do not know, but I suspect that with them also it is a good deal a matter of breeding.  There were not wanting some who liked the Professor better than the Autocrat.  I confess that I prefer my champagne in its first burst of gaseous enthusiasm; but if my guest likes it better after it has stood awhile, I am pleased to accommodate him.  The first of my series came from my mind almost with an explosion, like the champagne cork; it startled me a little to see what I had written, and to hear what people said about it.  After that first explosion the flow was more sober, and I looked upon the product of my wine-press more coolly.  Continuations almost always sag a little.  I will not say that of my own second effort, but if others said it, I should not be disposed to wonder at or to dispute them.

“The Poet at the Breakfast Table” came some years later.  This series of papers was not so much a continuation as a resurrection.  It was a doubly hazardous attempt, made without any extravagant expectations, and was received as well as I had any right to anticipate.  It differed from the other two series in containing a poem of considerable length, published in successive portions.  This poem holds a good deal of self-communing, and gave me the opportunity of expressing some thoughts and feelings not to be found elsewhere in my writings.  I had occasion to read the whole volume, not long since, in preparation for a new edition, and was rather more pleased with it than I had expected to be.  An old author is constantly rediscovering himself in the more or less fossilized productions of his earlier years.  It is a long time since I have read the “Autocrat,” but I take it up now and then and read in it for a few minutes, not always without some degree of edification.

These three series of papers, “Autocrat,” “Professor,” “Poet,” are all studies of life from somewhat different points of view.  They are largely made up of sober reflections, and appeared to me to require some lively human interest to save them from wearisome didactic dulness.  What could be more natural than that love should find its way among the young people who helped to make up the circle gathered around the table?  Nothing is older than the story of young love.  Nothing is newer than that same old story.  A bit of gilding here and there has a wonderful effect in enlivening a landscape or an apartment.  Napoleon consoled the Parisians in their year of defeat by gilding the dome of the Invalides.  Boston has glorified her State House and herself at the expense of a few sheets of gold leaf laid on the dome, which shines like a sun in the eyes of her citizens, and like a star in those of the approaching traveller.  I think the gilding of a love-story helped all three of these earlier papers.  The same need I felt in the series of papers just closed.  The slight incident of Delilah’s appearance and disappearance served my purpose to