We are also rather prone, it strikes uš, to give old writers an inordinate degree of credit for the quantity of erudition spread over their works. A good thought costs more time and labour than a chapter of quotations and learned allusions. Place a common writer in a good library, to compose a dissertation on any subject; and with the help of a steady ladder, if he be an active able-bodied man, he will contrive to draw off as much learning in a week, as shall appear the product of a long and studious life. And even in those cases, where, by habits of incessant acquisition, the mind becomes so saturated with knowledge that, in writing or conversation, it is perpetually dripping away from over-abundance, the intellectual labour of such accumulation is by no means more wonderful than what we daily witness in the ordinary labours of the more active professions. What treasures of universal learning, for example, might not any of our eminent barristers have amassed, if they had devoted to general subjects the time and thought which they sacrifice to the business of their clients! What thousands and tens of thousands of printed volumes might be formed out of the cases and the piles of affidavits submitted, during their professional career, to Erskine or Romilly, over every dull particular of which they were condemned to ponder with as much intense deliberation as the most laborious investigator of literature and science! What prodigies of book-learning ever kept their faculties more highly or continuously strained than these, or any other leader in Westminster Hall; who, besides the solitary drudgery of the closet, have to pass their days in court, where every power must be for ever on the alert, to detect intechnicalities, to fence with witnesses, to puzzle or persuade phlegmatic jurors, and to harangue, with extemporaneous ardour, upon every possible topic in the circle of human concerns-from the ignoble items of a tradesman's bill, up to the wrongs of violated majesty, or the more tender grievances of disappointed love. When we think upon these things, and upon the ceaseless and exhausting labours of the other intellectual callings of the present time, we are obliged, we must confess, to regard with comparatively small admiration, or surprise, all the boasted examples of extensive erudition. Some of the ablest men that we know agree with us in these opinions. Their libraries are small, consisting of the few great authors who thought originally, and are models in their kind. We recommend to our readers to follow their example, and to be severely fastidious in the selection of their literary favourites, provided the "New Monthly" be one of the number. KISSING. Humid seal of soft affection, Tend'rest pledge of future bliss, Love's first snow-drop-Virgin Kiss! I EXPECT the whole tribe of gentlemen and lady patrons of decorum about my ears for this profane meddling with a subject which possesses so many terrors for their hearts. If, however, the absence of all that can 66 give virtue scandal," or " innocence a tear," may be able to deprecate the wrath of the most rigid, it shall be my task to endeavour, by an utter want of all obnoxious topics, by a deliberate guiltlessness, so to disappoint the hopes of some speculator in morality, that he shall distrust the alluring promises of a title as long as he lives. When Wesley was once reproached for the application of some popular tune to a sacred hymn, he replied, that surely they would not have him leave all the good music to the devil. This spirit of economy was not the worst thing about that celebrated man--with his standing army of preachers-his voluntary police-his own great genius animating all-and then the ingenuity of his ways and means, that makes a book of melodies amenable to the per centage of his collector of excise! In the spirit of this great man it might be recommended, that, if there be a giddy vagrant abroad, corrupted in his time by evil communication, with some touch of virtue in his nature, and once the friend and companion of all the gentle deities that strewed the path of matrimony with flowers, it should be attempted to recal him to the circle of his ancient friends. We know not but that, by the force of example, and timely admonitions, the conversion of that gray prodigal-the Kiss-may be compassed: and if his immediate recantation be a blessing not to be expected, at least we are not precluded from venturing to put him upon reflection, and awaken him to an useful sense of his danger, by briefly calling to his mind the leading events of his past career. Kissing was an act of religion in ancient Rome. The nearest friend of a dying person performed the rite of receiving his soul by a kiss, supposing that it escaped through his lips at the moment of expiration, as is well expressed in these tender and familiar lines of Macrobius : "Dulcemque florem spiritus (ejus puellæ) Anima tunc ægra et saucia Concurrit ad labras mihi," &c. Spenser, in his Pastoral Elegy on the Death of Sir Philip Sidney, written after the Roman model, and referring chiefly to Roman manners, mentions it as a circumstance which renders the loss of his illustrious friend more to be lamented, that— "None was nigh, his eye-lids up to close, A little after, he introduces the lady, "the dearest love” of the deceased, weeping over him: "She with sweet kisses suck'd the wasting breath Out of his lips, like lilies pale and soft." The sacredness of the kiss was inviolable amongst the Romans for a long time. At length it was degraded into a current form of salutation. Pliny ascribes the introduction of the custom to the degeneracy of the Roman ladies, who, in violation of the hereditary delicacy of the females of Rome, descended to the indulgence of wine. Kissing was resorted to by those gentle, "good easy" husbands, who knew better than to risk the tumbling of the house about their ears, as the most effectual and courteous process (though a little objectionable for its hypocrisy), to ascertain the quality of their wives' stolen libations; and Cato the Elder recommends the plan to the serious attention of all careful heads of families. The kiss was, in process of time, diffused generally as a form of salutation in Rome, where men testified their regard, and the warmth of their welcome for each other, chiefly by the number of their kisses. When Numida returned from the Spanish war, the pleasure he felt at meeting with his old schoolfellow was in this way manifested: "Nulli plura tamen dividit oscula, Quàm dulci Lamiæ:" HOR. L. 1. Od. 36. One cannot easily account for the prevalence of this, as an indiscriminate custom, consistently with allowing to the patrician classes one touch of that aristocratic pride, which is not the result of the institutions or forms of society, but is the common quality of men with delicate habits, wherever there are dirty cobblers, and weavers, and tinkers, to be met with. Yet, though the following picture of Martial may be an exaggeration, and objected to as an extreme case, it still certifies, beyond all hope of contradiction, that the custom flourished, in all its extravagance, amongst the people of Rome: "Quantum dat tibi Roma basiorum Post annos modo quindecim reverso! Hircoso premit osculo colonus: Lib. 12. It was allowed sometimes, in the case of an inferior to one above him, to kiss the right hand-a custom which is remarkably recognised to this day amongst the Spaniards in their letters. Amongst the early Christians, the kiss of peace was a sacred ceremony, observed upon their most solemn occasions. It was called signaculum orationis-the seal of prayer; and was a symbol of that mutual forgiveness and reconciliation which the Church required, as an essential condition, before any one was admitted to the sacraments. The Roman civilians, at length, took the kiss under their protection. Their code has defined, with exquisite accuracy, the nature, limits, incidents, &c. of the Right of Kissing; although I do not find that this sort of property holds a place amongst the incorporeal hereditaments of our own laws. The kiss had all the virtue of a bond, granted as a seal to the ceremony of betrothing; and if the husband elect entered a nol. pros. repenting of what he had done, he surrendered a moiety of the presents received in the ceremony of betrothing, in consequence of the violence done to the modesty of the lady by a kiss! I am ignorant if the kiss was recognised in the ritual of the primitive Mahometans. The prophet himself has shewn a sacred regard for the ceremony, and has proved, with respect to it, how infinitely beneath the irregular fancy of an enthusiast is the disciplined one of a poet, The Roman bard stopped his Pegasus at the following flight. Speaking of the kisses of Lydia, he says, oscula quæ Venus Quinta parte sui nectaris imbuit." HOR. Lib. 1. Od. 13. The fortunate fair, whose excelling attribute of lip has obtained immortality for her charms, is reduced to a common mortal by a comparison with the far less famous daughter of Mahomet. "Quando," says the prophet, "subit mihi desiderium Paradisi, osculor eam," &c. But in much later times the kiss was esteemed to be a ceremony of particular obligation, as could be shewn in a thousand instances. The gentle Julia, in the "Two Gentlemen of Verona," after exchanging a ring with her lover, completes the contract by a kiss. "JULIA. And seal the bargain with a holy kiss." The same lady seems to entertain a high estimate of the efficacy of a kiss; for in the throes of her remorse, a little before, for having torn into fragments the love-letter of Proteus, she hits upon the following expedient: "JULIA.-I'll kiss each several paper for amends." Not satisfied, however, with this act of compunction, and opining that a kiss is the "sovereignest thing on earth for an inward bruise," she thus apostrophizes her absent lover: "My bosom, as a bed, Shall lodge thee till thy wound be throughly heal'd, Nor ought we to be surprised at the veneration which has been universally allowed to the ceremony of kissing, when we remember the important functions which devolve upon the lips in the economy of the human face. It is true they have not been thought worthy of a place in coats of armour, like the eyes, or raised to a level with the nose and ears, which have, ere now, been the objects of much costly decoration: but they form that privileged feature which represents, in their turn, the three most ennobling gifts of our nature-prophecy, poetry, and eloquence. The words "his lips were touched with fire," familiarly express the power of prophecy. In like manner numberless instances could be adduced in which the lips are put for the instinct of the poet : "And the lip that now breathes but the song of desire, MOORE. The currency of the expression," the lips," as a substitute for the faculty of oratory, is still more general. Hanging on his lips," "gathering wisdom from his lips," are phrases long legitimated. When the great Master of Poetry would give a notion of the persuasive powers of the Pylian sage, he chooses the metaphorical expression, "the words flowed from his lips like honey." "Experienced Nestor, in persuasion skill'd, Words, sweet as honey, from his lips distill'd." The ore rotundo of the poet, which literally means neither more nor less than "the lips," embodies, in its metaphorical sense, a series of qualities which it would be difficult to describe by any other two words in the language. Besides the importance of the lips in all these respects, they have a claim to our consideration from the share they hold in forming the expression of the face. And in particular persons, it seems, they are endowed with the faculty of recommending to our admiration certain passions naturally repulsive to us; as thus: "O what a deal of scorn looks beautiful In the contempt and anger of his lip." It is not, however, as an object of beauty alone that this feature is to be held forth as entitled to our consideration. In instances without number, as many a chronicle of conjugal life would bear witness, do they resemble in their office the ominous portals of the venerable fane of Janus-geminæ belli portæ and not with less certainty, alas! has the unclosing of |