"Nonsense, my dear," said he, "I hope you think it charming nonsense. I trust you have a proper esteem for nonsense. It has in it the soul of the deepest wisdom. Like the motley of the Middle Ages, it often covers up more wit and sense than the knight's helmet, the earl's cap of maintenance, or the abbot's mitre. I declare to you some

of the most solemn wise things I ever read have not seldom seemed to me the most painfully foolish or the most ridiculously absurd things in the world, while on the other hand, many things that Mrs. Slender thought very foolish, Miss Prim quite improper, and Doctor Rigid highly irreverent, have been to me the most charming lessons of virtue and religion, the purest goodness and the holiest worship, as full of pathos as of fun, making me laugh and making me cry, and making me better by both operations, filling my heart with more love to God and man than a dozen of Doctor Selah Solemn's Sermons on Sanctity, or Mrs. Softly's Serious Thoughts."

"What would become of us, my dear," he continued, "if all the books that Mrs. Slender thinks foolish, Miss Prim improper, and Doctor Rigid irreverent, were banished from the world ;-no more Mother Goose's Melodies, nor the tragical fate of

Cock Robin, nor the immoral exploits of Puss in Boots, nor the mournful tale of Little Bopeep's Sheep's Tails, nor the story of the Three Bears with their three porridge pots and chairs and beds, and the mysterious old woman that got in at their door and out at their bedroom window, and has never been heard of since,-no more these and a thousand other nonsensical stories of foolish impossibilities for the little people to laugh over, and weep over, and wonder over; and no more Rabelais with his Pantagruel and Panurge, Cervantes with his Knight and Squire, Shakespeare with his more talkers of wise nonsense than I can name here; no more Uncle Toby and Corporal Trim; no more Doctor Primrose and Moses, nor Elia, nor Doctor Dove, nor Diedrick Knickerbocker, nor Mr. Sparrowgrass, for the delight of old folks and young folks both ;but all these, and hundreds of others, great like these in nonsense, done away with from the face of the earth, gone from human memory, and nothing left for the young people but Mrs. Sweet's Infant Hymns, and Professor Savethought's Great Things made Small, and nothing for the older folks but Dr. Solemn's Sermons and Mrs. Softly's Serious Thoughts! Think of it, my dear Mrs. Oldham ! I really do not believe it would be good for the world."

The Doctor paused, quite affected by the picture he had drawn.

"But, husband,” said Mrs. Oldham, “it is not every one that can see the soul of wisdom and goodness in those books of nonsense as well as you can, and therefore we ought to be glad there are such writings as Doctor Solemn's Sermons and Mrs. Softly's Serious Thoughts."

"True, my dear, true," replied the Doctor, "but let us also honor wise and holy nonsense."

CHAPTER II.

WHICH GROWS OUT OF THE INARTISTIC WAY THIS BOOK BEGAN; BUT GIVES THE AUTHOR A CHANCE TO SPEAK OF THE COURTEOUS READER OF THE LAST AGE; AND ALSO TO EXPLAIN HIMSELF TO THE COURTEOUS READER OF THE PRESENT DAY.

66 Courteous

WHAT a fine old personage was the Reader" for whom the writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries wrote their books. How delightful the image or EIDOLON of him that rises before the mind's eye, as we notice in the writings of that time the thousand little tokens of thorough good understanding and mutual respect between the author and his reader. The picture is as distinct and agreeable as that of Sir Roger de Coverley; and we feel a positive regard for him such as we cannot help feeling for the good old Knight-who was himself undoubtedly one of the most courteous of the courteous readers of his day.

I trust the generation of them is not extinct,

although I do not so often perceive them to be expressly addressed in the books of our day but this, I would fain believe, is owing only to that same change in the fashion and manner of the times which makes the polite forms of social intercourse to be so much more brief and simple, and causes so much to be now tacitly taken for granted in the way of courteous and kindly feeling which it was the custom to give ample and ceremonious expression to in those days.

So I am apt to think. Why not? body imagine Sir Roger de

Does any

Coverley to be dead?

I for one will never believe it. You will not indeed find him in the same fashion of dress, nor journeying along the road in the same way, nor with the same accidents of position and circumstance; but putting out of view the different way in which modern tailors make up men, and the different modes of travelling all the accidents of the case, I am bold to say that every body has met him more than once on the steamboats and in the railway cars; some perhaps without knowing him, some of us know him well-have been out in fact at his house, and found him the same personage, as fresh and delightful as ever, the same charming mixture of benevolence, old-fashioned politeness,

but