Literature is so common a luxury that the age has grown fastidious.

Legitimately produced, and truly inspired, fiction interprets humanity, informs the understanding, and quickens the affections. It reflects ourselves, warns us against prevailing social follies, adds rich specimens to our cabinets of character, dramatizes life for the unimaginative, daguerreotypes it for the unobservant, multiplies experience for the isolated or inactive, and cheers age, retirement and invalidism with an available and harmless solace.

To be a good traveler argues one no ordinary philosopher. A sweet landscape must sometimes be allowed to atone for an indifferent supper, and an interesting ruin charm away the remembrance of a hard bed.

To a nice ear, the quality of a voice is singularly affecting. Its depth seems to be allied to feeling; at least, the contralto notes alone give an adequate sense of pathos. They are born near the heart.

Credulity is perhaps a weakness almost inseparable from eminently truthful characters.

Without the definiteness of sculpture and painting, music is, for that very reason, far more suggestive. Like Milton's Eve, an outline, an impulse, is furnished, and the imagination does the rest.

Whatever is genuine in social relations endures, despite of time, error, absence, and destiny; and that which has no inherent vitality had better die at once. A great poet has truly declared that constancy is no virtue, but a fact.