to end; or if you propose to enter on the field of controversy, you
should first have thought upon the question under all conditions,
in health as well as in sickness, in sorrow as well as in joy. It
is this nearness of examination necessary for any true and kind
writing, that makes the practice of the art a prolonged and noble
education for the writer.

There is plenty to do, plenty to say, or to say over again, in the
meantime. Any literary work which conveys faithful facts or
pleasing impressions is a service to the public. It is even a
service to be thankfully proud of having rendered. The slightest
novels are a blessing to those in distress, not chloroform itself a
greater. Our fine old sea-captain's life was justified when
Carlyle soothed his mind with The King's Own or Newton Forster. To
please is to serve; and so far from its being difficult to instruct
while you amuse, it is difficult to do the one thoroughly without
the other. Some part of the writer or his life will crop out in
even a vapid book; and to read a novel that was conceived with any
force is to multiply experience and to exercise the sympathies.

Every article, every piece of verse, every essay, every entre-
filet, is destined to pass, however swiftly, through the minds of
some portion of the public, and to colour, however transiently,
their thoughts. When any subject falls to be discussed, some
scribbler on a paper has the invaluable opportunity of beginning
its discussion in a dignified and human spirit; and if there were
enough who did so in our public press, neither the public nor the
Parliament would find it in their minds to drop to meaner thoughts.
The writer has the chance to stumble, by the way, on something
pleasing, something interesting, something encouraging, were it