enjoy your little domain. Many things have been accomplished since
you went indoors. The weeds are gone from the corner: the spray
of the rose lias been trained. The potato-beds have been examined:
the potatoes will be all ready in two days more. Sit down in the
shade, warm yet cool, of a great tree. Now is the time to read the
Saturday Review, especially the article that pitches into you. What
do you care for it? I don't mean that you despise it: I mean that
it causes you no feeling but one of amusement and pleasure. You
feel that it is written by a clever man and a gentleman: you know
that there is not a vestige of malice in it. You would like to shake
hands with the writer, and to thank him for various useful hints.
As for reviewing which is truly malignant--that which deals in
intentional misrepresentation and coarse abuse--it is practically
unknown in respectable periodicals. And wherever you may find it
(as you sometimes may) you ought never to be angry with the man
who did it: you ought to be sorry for him. Depend upon it, the poor
fellow is in bad health or in low spirits: no one but a man who is
really unhappy himself will deliberately set himself to annoy any
one else. It is the misery, anxiety, poverty, which are wringing the
man's heart, that make their pitiful moan in that bitter article.
Make the poor man better off, and he will be better natured.

And so, my friend, now that our task is finished, let us go out
in this kindly temper to enjoy the summer day. But you must first
assure your mind that your work is really finished. You cannot thus
simply enjoy the summer day, if you have a latent feeling rankling
at your heart that you are neglecting something that you ought to
do. The little jar of your moral being caused by such a feeling,
will be like the horse-hair shirt, will be like the peas in the
pilgrim's shoes. So, clerical reader, after you have written your