Literature, like virtue, is its own reward, and the enthusiasm some experience in the permanent enjoyments of a vast library, have far outweighed the neglect or the calumny of the world, which some of its votaries have received. From the time that Cicero poured forth his feelings in his oration for the poet Archias, innumerable are the testimonies of men of letters of the pleasurable delirium of their researches; that delicious beverage which they have swallowed, so thirstily, from the magical cup of literature.

Men are continually in search of some sequestered retreat, some villa on the sea-shore, or on some airy mountain. And you, my friend, were formerly very much attached to retirement. But this is evidently a mere vulgar conception of things. You have it in your power, at any time and in any place, to retire into yourself; and where can a man find a more peaceful or more undisturbed repose than in his own soul? Especially one who, when he looks into his own breast, finds nothing there but a perfect calm; such a calm I mean as arises from order and well-regulated passions and affections.

We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate. As if the main object were to talk fast and not to talk sensibly. We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the New; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough. After all, the man whose horse trots a mile in a minute does not carry the most important messages.