No one can avoid speculating on the faces and appearances of those he meets with in the streets. The whole mass of persons form a picture of almost infinite detail, and inexhaustible fund of amusement. The janty air of the man of fashion, the formal manner of the spruce apprentice, the stolid look of an over-fed alderman, are all characteristic. To walk perfectly at ease, and enjoy the full current of reflection, without any one to jostle or interrupt you, tread the pavement of some mighty thoroughfare at the silent hour of midnight, with the moon wheeling in her course over your head, the whole city wrapped in slumber, and a death-like stillness pervading all things. This delicious quiet is superior to any day-scene, save a fine Sunday morning in a beautiful part of the country: a neat village, for instance, embosomed among lofty hills, whose sides are covered with forest trees, and whose tops project their bare and rugged summits high into the sky-a small church-the great wheel of the mill standing still-the cattle lolling in the noontide heat-the clear lake without a ripple-the gardens of the villagers, sending forth showers of perfume from their beds of flowers-the air calm as the breathing of a sleeping child, save when it is vexed by the drone of a bee, or the distant low of cattle. This is a scene for the landscape painter of the rarest skill and most poetic feeling. XXXVII. THE HOUSEWIFE : A CHARACTER. THE housewife must be a middle-aged woman, and of a bustling disposition. In house-cleaning, a peculiar part of her vocation, she rises even to a pitch of enthusiasm. This is no wise diminished by the pailsful of cold water that she constantly lavishes in scrubbing and washing the woodwork. She must have Dutch blood in her veins, stimulated by her American birth and education, and crossed with English method and prudence. Her forte is dusting, for which she employs more old handkerchiefs and rags than would furnish out a picturesque army of beggars. She has a mat before every door, and allows none but guests and strangers to come in by the street steps. The family enter by the basement. She says she never cleans, but keeps clean. She will not suffer a crumb on the carpet nor a drop of tea on the table. A stain on the table-cloth is as bad as a stain upon her reputation. Her conscience is absolutely harrowing on these points. I once trod on a door-sill in her entry which had been newly painted, and this offence was not obliterated from her memory until long after it had vanished from the floor under a fresh coat of paint-nay, I have little doubt she remembers it still to my disadvantage. She generally lives in the poorest room of the house, under the disinterested plea of saving her fine furniture for company. When she has friends to tea she is very fidgety about having the chairs removed out of their places. In the midst of the parlor stands a table covered with elegantly bound books and fine engravings, which it is treason to touch or open. She has a keen eye for finger-prints on doors near the handles, and traces of one's feet on a newly-washed stoop. She is a great admirer of Mrs. Glasse, and keeps a large book full of receipts and directions. She is a capital fancy cook and confectioner, and can make a blanc-mange or jelly equal to a professed artist. A fine stirring housekeeper she esteems the perfection of her sex. Her carpets are covered with baize, and her lamps and glasses with paper, to keep off the flies. She is particularly careful about fires and candles, and goes about the last thing at night, to see that all in the house are put out. The servants often grumble at this inspection. It is a maxim with her, that not one person in a hundred can carry a candle straight. When her friends bring children to the house she is in an agony lest they break the jars or throw balls through the windows. To speak the truth, she is otherwise very kind to them, stuffing their pockets with dough nuts and krullers worthy of her Dutch grandmother. On Sundays she stays at home, and sends the servants to church. In her person she is invariably neat and tidy, unlike that boastful woman who told her one day, "My dear Kitty, I'm the only thing my house that is not as clean as wax," to which she made answer, in a dignified manner, "I think, Mrs. A., you ought rather to reverse your attention, if it is impossible both should be clean." She loves to keep old family and personal relics, old linen, fashionable dresses when she was a belle (forty years back,) old china, glasses, silver mugs, curious coins, painted tumblers, and such like closet antiquities. She exhibits her affection in keeping locks of hair and pulled teeth of her relatives and acquaintance. If she is musical, she keeps a collection of old music, where the latest is one of Burns' fine songs. Her piano is crazy from age, and out of tune; her harp has two or three strings broken, and her flageolet is cracked like her natural voice. She has her hair dyed, and wears a set of false teeth. Her natural vanity not allowing her to wear spectacles, she complains of being fashionably near-sighted. Otherwise she preserves her looks very well, and is quite a fine-looking woman. Her talk is almost entirely with ladies of her own stamp, about servants, dresses, dishes, children and furniture. She often asks Mrs. Siddons' question of the linen-draper, though in a more familiar tone, “Will it wash?" She prefers, nevertheless, taking a hand at piquet or backgammon, to spending the evening in conversation. I should not be surprised if at this very moment she was innocently delighted at having made a hit-I am sure I hope I have, in my portrait of her. XXXVIII. READING AND STUDY. Of all the trades to which that multifarious animal, man, can turn himself, I am now disposed to look upon intense study as the idlest, the most unsatisfying and the most unprofitable.-Beattie, Let. 33, to Capt. Mercer. THE main distinction between reading and study is, that the latter is generally regarded as synonymous with labor and attention, while the former is understood rather as a relaxation from business or professional cares, than as a source of elegant gratification. Now we think, despite of the slurs cast upon that liberal minded and truly intelligent class of readers commonly called "general readers," there is no body of men to whom an author of genius and elegance can more appropriately address himself. The term "general reader" is in very low esteem with those scientific or professional pedants who, confined in their studies merely to professional topics, have not comprehension of mind or elegance of taste enough to relish anything beyond their accustomed round. The mind of one of these excluded from general information by devotion to one science, something resembles the lady in the Italian tale, who, wishing to hide herself in sport from her lover, took refuge in a chest, the lock of which shutting on the outside, it became a living tomb. Thus these narrow minded cavilers at versatility, embalming themselves in their favorite subjects, become intellectually dead, as regards the external world and familiar things. There is nothing so delightful (not to mention its advantages) as desultory reading. It is detached from all system and scholastic restraint. The mind is "studious of change:" it hates regularity always. There are times and occasions when method is au essential virtue; in our recreations, however, it is a complete damper-it chills enthusiasm and disperses the fine thoughts of genius. Besides, in the present state of society, we must be encyclopædical in our acquirements; it will not answer for a man to be deep (as it is styled, which after all means dull and prosy) on a single subject. He must have much and varied knowledge of many things. The mere any thing, now-a-days, is entirely out of place. Even a poet must be in some measure a man of the world. How, we would ask these learned philosophers, would it look in a company of some dozen persons, if every man had a distinct profes ion, art or trade, and knew nothing else? The poet and the merchant, the lawyer and the orator and the dominie, the painter and the chemist, would be entirelyat loggerheads. Let a man follow a grand object if he will, and aim at perfection in it; but let him not reject other and perhaps more excellent acquirements. This is perhaps the strongest argument to be brought against the classics, for they, of all other studies, demand a minute attention and thorough surrender of time and talent. Hence we rarely see a pure classical scholar at all acquainted with the various literature of the moderns-with the literature of his own coun try-least of all, with the literature and wisdom of the old masters in our early tongue. Theologians are a fair instance of the effect of one pursuit. They are (to speak of them as a class) the dullest of mortals, knowing nothing, or next to nothing, of literature, art, life and character. These men are the moles of literature, always grubbing their way amid dark, unprofitable and stupefying studies. Lawyers are very different from these, young ones especially. Perhaps there is no one profession which embraces so much talent, clearness and taste in elegant matters, with gentlemanly feeling, as the Law. Much leisure, with their natural inclination, leads them to these pursuits; but wearisome plodders, who can climb up the high road to Learning's temple with slow and heavy step, having neither the wings of the poet, nor the lightness of the prose writer, nor the energy of the orator, are the bane and pest of letters. "Study is like heaven's glorious sun, That will not be deep searched by saucy looks; Save bare authority from others' books," is the opinion of the greatest master of character, as well as the profoundest philosopher and the finest poet that ever lived. Scholars, however, have in general a higher opinion of one who can defend a moral commonplace by his quotations, than of him who brings out from "the coinage of his brain" sentences, equally fine, of home manufacture. "I seek," says one with equal frankness and wisdom, "in the reading of books, only to please myself by an irreproachable diversion; or if I study, it is for no other science than what treats of the knowledge of myself, and instructs me how to live and die well." A most admirable remark indeed! in this world, where so many and so great subjects draw off our attention from the study of the most important subjects-our own minds and hearts. This "half good fellow, half gossip," goes on to say, "I do not bite my nails about the difficulties I meet with in my reading; after a charge or two. I give them over. Should I insist upon them, I should both lose myself and time; for I have an impatient understanding that must be satisfied at first." If this confession be not good advice, we know |