find one in which the analogy is carried on beyond a single point. Nor are they remarkable for their elegance or ingenuity. The most beautiful figure cited by him is, perhaps, the saying of Pericles, "That the youth which had perished in the war, had vanished from the city as if the spring had been taken from the year." It is singular, however, that he should present this to his readers as a metaphor, when it is obviously in the form of a simile.

In the instances of faulty metaphor which I have now cited, it is plain, I think, that had the respective writers had vivid conceptions of the imagery which they employed, they could not have fallen into such incongruities. This clearness or vividness of conception is probably, in a great measure, the gift of nature, but it may, like other faculties, be greatly improved by judicious cultivation. A writer, let his natural endowments in this respect be ever so scanty, may acquire the habit of drawing out, in imagination, the metaphorical ideas which he employs, and thus enable himself to mark any inconsistencies by which they may happen to be disfigured. And he will find that a habit of this kind, which is by no means of difficult

acquisition, will not only confer perspicuity on his style, but put into his hands a test by which to try the style of others, as well as enhance the enjoyment presented to him in the pages of our purest and most imaginative writers.

But I must here stop. On looking back, I find I have accumulated example on example till my letter has outgrown the usual size. How easy would it have been to fill twice the space with those flowers of rhetoric which bloom-in the wilderness of my library!

Adieu.

F. R.

LETTER XXII.

Salutary Effect of frequent Intercourse with our Fellow Creatures-Conversation useful independently of adding to our Knowledge-Variety of Characters in every Society-Specimens Minds requiring Excitement to bring them to the point of Efficiency.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

Retired as I profess to live, and much as I enjoy seclusion, I make it a point to mix almost daily in society. It seems necessary to the healthful state of the mind to associate habitually with our fellow-creatures on easy and familiar terms. When we intermit for any long period this salutary intercourse, we seem to lose in correctness of feeling and soundness of judgment. Men and things no longer maintain in our views their true relative positions. Some become too prominent; others fade into unmerited indistinctness; some are unduly elevated, others unjustly depressed; and all this from not having

our impressions renewed and corrected by a comparison with those of other people. Good sense and tact consist in a great measure in knowing the effect of circumstances on the minds of others, and this can be ascertained only by freely mixing with them. I cannot, therefore, entirely agree with Lord Bolingbroke, where he says "When I, who pass a great part-very much the greatest part, of my life alone, sally forth into the world, I am very far from expecting to improve myself by the conversation I find there; and still further from caring one jot for what passes there."*

It is true, I seem to myself, on any given occasion, to learn very little from ordinary conversation. In trying afterwards to recollect what new ideas I have gathered, I may not, perhaps, succeed in finding any which can fairly rank under that description; but, if I have acquired no new ideas, I have, at all events, ascertained what old ones are in the minds of those with whom I have been conversing.

By this freedom of intercourse, I keep up

* Letter 212, Vol. II.

my knowledge of the moral and intellectual state of my fellow-creatures, which is, perhaps, quite as useful as maintaining my familiarity (pleasant though it be) with Latin and Greek. I have, also, my social feelings, and particularly my sympathies, exercised; which, doubtless, preserves a man from a thousand little oddities and errors, and cherishes that current kindliness and urbanity of which the more rigid recluse often finds the want. It was the remark of a very shrewd and sensible observer of mankind (I mean Mr. Jefferson, the American statesman), in writing to some of his friends respecting his return home after a long residence in Europe, that he considered it would be no small advantage to have an opportunity of resuming the tone of mind of his constituents, which is lost by long absence, and can be recovered only by mixing with them. There is, in the same way, a tone of human nature in general, as well as of particular classes, which every man should keep up, and which is equally in danger of being lost by absenting ourselves from the society of our fellow-creatures.

In freely associating with my country neigh