LITERARY LIFE.


Among the great variety of characters which fall in a traveller's way,
I became acquainted during my sojourn in London, with an eccentric
personage of the name of Buckthorne. He was a literary man, had lived
much in the metropolis, and had acquired a great deal of curious,
though unprofitable knowledge concerning it. He was a great observer of
character, and could give the natural history of every odd animal that
presented itself in this great wilderness of men. Finding me very
curious about literary life and literary characters, he took much pains
to gratify my curiosity.

"The literary world of England," said he to me one day, "is made up of
a number of little fraternities, each existing merely for itself, and
thinking the rest of the world created only to look on and admire. It
may be resembled to the firmament, consisting of a number of systems,
each composed of its own central sun with its revolving train of moons
and satellites, all acting in the most harmonious concord; but the
comparison fails in part, inasmuch as the literary world has no general
concord. Each system acts independently of the rest, and indeed
considers all other stars as mere exhalations and transient meteors,
beaming for awhile with false fires, but doomed soon to fall and be
forgotten; while its own luminaries are the lights of the universe,
destined to increase in splendor and to shine steadily on to
immortality."

"And pray," said I, "how is a man to get a peep into one of these