offer, in the brief seasons of our perishable days. I own that I
have not read, and do not, in the circumstances, expect to read, all
of Dumas, nor even the greater part of his thousand volumes. We
only dip a cup in that sparkling spring, and drink, and go on,--we
cannot hope to exhaust the fountain, nor to carry away with us the
well itself. It is but a word of gratitude and delight that we can
say to the heroic and indomitable master, only an ave of friendship
that we can call across the bourne to the shade of the Porthos of
fiction. That his works (his best works) should be even still more
widely circulated than they are; that the young should read them,
and learn frankness, kindness, generosity--should esteem the tender
heart, and the gay, invincible wit; that the old should read them
again, and find forgetfulness of trouble, and taste the anodyne of
dreams, that is what we desire.

Dumas said of himself ("Memoires," v. 13) that when he was young he
tried several times to read forbidden books--books that are sold
sous le manteau. But he never got farther than the tenth page, in
the


"scrofulous French novel
On gray paper with blunt type;"


he never made his way so far as


"the woful sixteenth print."