Of studious Peace and mild Philosophy,
Indignant murmurs mote be heard to threat.--WEST.

MR. CLEVELAND wanted to enrich one of his letters with a quotation from
Ariosto, which he but imperfectly remembered. He had seen the book he
wished to refer to in the little study the day before; and he quitted the
library to search for it.

As he was tumbling over some volumes that lay piled on the writing-table,
he felt a student's curiosity to discover what now constituted his host's
favourite reading. He was surprised to observe that the greater portion
of the works that, by the doubled leaf and the pencilled reference,
seemed most frequently consulted, were not of a literary nature,--they
were chiefly scientific; and astronomy seemed the chosen science. He
then remembered that he had heard Maltravers speaking to a builder,
employed on the recent repairs, on the subject of an observatory. "This
is very strange," thought Cleveland; "he gives up literature, the rewards
of which are in his reach, and turns to science, at an age too late to
discipline his mind to its austere training."

Alas! Cleveland did not understand that there are times in life when
imaginative minds seek to numb and to blunt imagination. Still less did
he feel that, when we perversely refuse to apply our active faculties to
the catholic interests of the world, they turn morbidly into channels of
research the least akin to their real genius. By the collision of minds
alone does each mind discover what is its proper product: left to
ourselves, our talents become but intellectual eccentricities.

Some scattered papers, in the handwriting of Maltravers, fell from one of
the volumes. Of these, a few were but algebraical calculations, or short