true feeling and affected emotion. Moore endeavors to create a sensation among his audience; Burns, to touch the heart of the reader or singer. Of the sentimental talker of fashion, Joseph Surface is a fair specimen, eternally moralizing and making reflections upon trivialities. This is the true fashionable pedantry, more contracted than that of the scholar and antiquary.

True sentiment, the offspring of natural feeling and intelligent judgment, is the sure bond of friendship and love, for what is love but the purest and highest of all sentiments? which is only such in its essence, when wholly detached from all thoughts of a sensual description. The highest love is the noblest sentiment-self-denying, exalted, sincere. Next to that sublime emotion, and perhaps more lasting-where really constant at all-is generous friendship, of which, though the longer we live the more incredulous we become, yet which, when we do find it firm, we revere as the noblest passion that can fill the breast of humanity.

As to the requisites for writers in these departments: Satire requires intellectual acuteness; sentiment, refinement and nicety of thought. There is a sentiment of the headalready referred to-current among authors; there is a sentiment of the heart, native to philanthropists. There is a commoner sort still, the sentiment of conversation. To be a witty satirist, requires a keen understanding. To become a tolerable sentimental writer, a goodly quantity of interjections. In books, to be a strong satirist, demands greater force of intellect; to write delicate sentiment calls for ingenuity of perception and delicacy of taste. Sentiment requires an author with a certain effeminacy of thought and style, like Marmontel, who, in his memoirs, confesses the effect of female society and conversation on his writings. Satire, on

the other hand, is masculine, and braces the powers of the intellect.

Sentiment is of three kinds: plain, honest, manly, simple -the outbursting of an uncorrupted heart—or, graceful and refined, cultivated by education, elevated by society, purified by religion; or else of that magnificent and swelling character, such as fills the breast of the patriot and the genuine philanthropist. The sentiment of old Izaak Walton-to take examples from books-answers to the first: the sentiment of Mackenzie and Sterne, to the second: the sentiment of Wordsworth, and Burke, and Shakspeare, to the third.

In the character of a complete gentleman, satire should occupy no position of consequence; it should be held subordinate to the higher principles and nobler sentiments. A desire to diminish and ridicule is meaner than the ambition “to elevate and surprise." It is even more agreeable to find eulogy in excess, than censure. A boaster ranks above a tattler, and a vain-glorious fellow is always better received than a carking, contemptible depreciator. Easy, pleasant raillery is not the thing we mean, but a cold, malicious, sneering humor, a turn for degrading and vitiating everything. Sentiment, in its purity, which continually leans to the ideal of perfection, is to be cherished-a remnant of Christian chivalry-as the fit ornament of the accomplished gentleman;- —an ornament like that promised in the Book of Proverbs to the good son, an ornament of grace unto thy head, and chains about thy neck."

XVII.

SUMMER READING.

summer

HAZLITT, in one of his delightful Table Talks, speaks of certain of Hume's lighter miscellaneous Essays as mere reading, “in comparison with his Treatise on Human Nature, which he very judiciously calls "a metaphysical choke-pear." The distinction between the two classes of writing may afford a slight distinction between light reading and laborious study, or rather between winter studies and summer reading.

We are far from calling even the least labored and subtle of Hume's speculations, or those of any metaphysician, indeed, properly summer reading. They would rather rank among the studies of that season. By summer reading, we mean generally to express agreeable, pleasant, intellectual entertainment, to be derived from light, graceful, and interesting writers. It is true, that with most readers this summer reading extends over the whole year. That what should be kept for a season of lassitude and comparative indolence, is too often retained throughout the season of labor and studythe winter; the season, as Hunt sings,

"To which the poet looks,

For hiving his sweet thoughts and making honeyed books.”

But we do not write to those who transpose the seasons, or rather make all seasons alike; like those birds of passage, who, at the close of autumn, leave the north for a more genial region; and unlike those wise and grateful (yet perhaps necessarily robust) natures, who delight in every variety of the seasons-who love the cordial heats of summer, and feel braced by the rough blasts of winter-who admire the

fullness and freshness of life in spring, and are delighted with the rich glories and sombre tints of autumn. All pleasures are made equal: the summer morning" with song of earliest birds;" the winter evening by the cheerful fire side; the April showers, and the fine days of October; even the chill blasts of March, and the wintry sky of December.

Summer" refulgent summer"--the period of repose, the season of early dinners and mid-day or afternoon siestas--of cool morning and evening walks-of iced drinks, and salt baths, and sea-shore breezes, and country visits; it is of this glowing period we write. And what are the books to be read now? Surely nothing difficult, or complex, or intricate, or dry, or subtle. No hard study for us, my masters; give us easy reading-not to be confounded with that which is easily written, whoever, by any means. On this sultry, close day, who would take up Locke, or Hobbes; Milton's prose, or even his poetry? No, we want something gossamer-light, the syllabub, not the pièces de résistance of literature. Even fine poetry of the more elevated description is too high. No tragedy for hot weather, except the farce of that name: no epic strain, no ardent Pindarics, or flaming lyrics of love. Nothing that requires much thought or attention: nothing that deeply affects the heart. Banish sentiments, banish imagination; but not gay wit, nor ever-cheerful humor. Swift's saturnine humor is not the thing, nor the biting wit of the satirist; but the gay writers generally. Yet, as a class of books, none appear to me better fitted for this season than lively and sensible travels, especially in the South and East -the regions of the Tropics and the Orient. Eastern travels always read best in summer: the season is in consonance with the text. The sultry heat out o'doors gives a confirmation strong of the stifling air of the desert on the author's pages;

and the sweet spray of fountains is cooling, both to see and hear. Camels, dates, elephants, palm trees, the dusky Arab, the swart Moslem, all appear to be, and are, strictly in keeping with a burning sun and his ardent rays, in midsummer. By a slight exercise of imagination, we can easily transport ourselves over land and sea, by the aid of the warm weather, as well as on the wing of that sightless laborer, the wind. Sitting in a close room, of a hot day, how easy to think of cities in Spain or Morocco--of Stamboul and Grand Cairo-of the Nile and the desert. Fancy can travel faster than steam, and takes the willing voyager captive over the passages of leaded type, rendered heavy to give emphasis to light description.

It is difficult for a person of little imagination to reverse the matter; to think heartily, and realize the warmth and richness of oriental life, in winter. "Oh, who can hold a fire in his hands," etc. Some of the later books of travels, (Eothen, the Crescent and the Cross, and particularly Thackeray's Tour,) deserve to be especially remembered just

now.

They are to be read on a breezy eminence, or under a spreading tree, not as Midsummer Night's Dream, but as noon-day fancies.

We forget the name of the writer, (French, English or German, we are not certain,) who, some fifty years ago, made the remark, that in no department of modern literature had so great improvement been made as in the class of books of travel. Probably this was a fair judgment at the time, although (with regard to the mass of books of this kind, not the few we may select for praise,) if the case were to be reheard and tried over again on its merits, the decision might be reversed. For, to tell the truth, at this present writing, in no walk of authorship have there been greater failures, (tragedies and epic poems excepted,) than in that of travels.