CRITICISM.

THE chief characteristic of Mr. Mitchell's style is grace. His pictures of life in The Reveries of a Bachelor are extremely captivating and romantic. All through his writings there is a truthfulness to Nature which makes one feel that the author must have known something of the reader's own life. As an observer he is attentive and discriminating; as an adviser, kind and hopeful; and as a writer, natural and graceful. His books are characterized by a healthy sentiment and a delicacy of humor which pervade all of them, and make them not only instructive, but also intensely interesting. Mitchell's beauty, grace, and naturalness of style give him claim to being one of the most delightful writers of the National Period of our literature.

FIRST AMBITION.

[For study and analysis.]

NOTE.-The following extract is taken from Mitchell's Dream

Life.

I BELIEVE that sooner or later there come to every man dreams of ambition. They may be covered with the sloth of habit or with a pretence of humility; they may come only in dim, shadowy visions that feed the eye like the glories of an ocean sunrise; but you may 5 be sure that they will come: even before one is aware the bold, adventurous goddess whose name is Ambition, and whose dower is Fame, will be toying with the feeble heart. And she pushes her ventures with a bold hand; she makes timidity strong and weakness valiant.

The way of a man's heart will be foreshadowed by what goodness lies in him, coming from above and from

around; but a way foreshadowed is not a way made. And the making of a man's way comes only from that quickening of resolve which we call Ambition. It is 15 the spur that makes man struggle with Destiny; it is Heaven's own incentive to make Purpose great and Achievement greater.

It would be strange if you, in that cloister-life of a college, did not sometimes feel a dawning of new re-20 solves. They grapple you, indeed, oftener than you dare to speak of. Here you dream first of that very sweet but very shadowy success called reputation.

You think of the delight and astonishment it would give your mother and father, and, most of all, little 25 Nelly, if you were winning such honors as now escape you. You measure your capacities by those about you, and watch their habit of study; you gaze for a half hour together upon some successful man who has won his prizes, and wonder by what secret action he has done it. 30 And when, in time, you come to be a competitor yourself, your anxiety is immense.

You spend hours upon hours at your theme. You write and rewrite, and when it is at length complete and out of your hands, you are harassed by a thousand 35 doubts. At times, as you recall your hours of toil, you question if so much has been spent upon any other; you feel almost certain of success. You repeat to yourɛelf some passages of special eloquence at night. You fancy the admiration of the professors at meeting with 40 such wonderful performance. You have a slight fear that its superior goodness may awaken the suspicion that some one out of the college, some superior man, may have written it. But this fear dies away.

The eventful day is a great one in your calendar; you # hardly sleep the night previous. You tremble as the chapel-bell is rung; you profess to be very indifferent;

as the reading and the prayer close you even stoop to take up your hat, as if you had entirely overlooked the fact that the old president was in the desk for the ex-50 press purpose of declaring the successful names. You listen dreamily to his tremulous yet fearfully distinct enunciation. Your head swims strangely.

They all pass out with a harsh murmur along the aisles and through the doorways. It would be well if 55 there were no disappointments in life more terrible than this. It is consoling to express very deprecating opinions of the faculty in general, and very contemptuous ones of that particular officer who decided upon the merit of the prize themes. An evening or two at Dalton's 60 room goes still farther toward healing the disappointment, and—if it must be said-toward moderating the heat of your ambition.

You grow up, however, unfortunately, as the college years fly by, into a very exaggerated sense of your own 65 capacities. Even the good old, white-haired squire, for whom you had once entertained so much respect, seems to your crazy classic fancy a very humdrum sort of personage. Frank, although as noble a fellow as ever sat a horse, is yet-you cannot help thinking-very igno- 70 rant of Euripides; even the English master of Dr. Bidlcw's school, you feel sure, would balk at a dozen problems you could give him.

You get an exalted idea of that uncertain quality which turns the heads of a vast many of your fellows, 75 called Genius. An odd notion seems to be inherent in the atmosphere of those college-chambers that there is a certain faculty of mind-first developed, as would seem, in colleges which accomplishes whatever it chooses without any special painstaking. For a time 30 you fall yourself into this very unfortunate hallucination; you cultivate it, after the usual college fashion, by

drinking a vast deal of strong coffee and whisky toddy, by writing a little poor verse in the Byronic temper, and by studying very late at night with closed blinds.

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It costs you, however, more anxiety and hypocrisy than you could possibly have believed. You will learn, Clarence, when the autumn has rounded your hopeful summer, if not before, that there is no Genius in life like the Genius of energy and industry. You will learn 90 that all the traditions so current among very young men, that certain great characters have wrought their greatness by an inspiration, as it were, grow out of a sad mistake.

And you will further find, when you come to measure 95 yourself with men, that there are no rivals so formidable as those earnest, determined minds which reckon the value of every hour, and which achieve eminence by persistent application.

Literary ambition may inflame you at certain periods, 100 and a thought of some great names will flash like a spark into the mine of your purposes; you dream till midnight over books; you set up shadows and chase. them down-other shadows, and they fly. Dreaming will never catch them. Nothing makes the "scent lie 105 well" in the hunt after distinction but labor.

And it is a glorious thing, when once you are weary of the dissipation and the ennui of your own aimless thought, to take up some glowing page of an earnest thinker, and read, deep and long, until you feel the 110 metal of his thought tinkling on your brain, and striking out from your flinty lethargy flashes of ideas that give the mind light and heat. And away you go in the chase of what the soul within is creating on the instant, and you wonder at the fecundity of what seemed so barren, 115 and at the ripeness of what seemed so crude. The glow of toil wakes you to the consciousness of your real

capacities; you feel sure that they have taken a new step toward final development. In such mood it is that one feels grateful to the musty tomes which at other 120 hours stand like curiosity-making mummies, with no warmth and no vitality. Now they grow into the affections like new-found friends, and gain a hold upon the heart and light a fire in the brain that the years and the mould cannot cover or quench.

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EXTRACT.

THERE are those who shudder at the approach of autumn, and who feel a light grief stealing over their spirits like an October haze as the evening shadows slant sooner and longer over the face of an ending August day.

But is not autumn the manhood of the year? Is it not the ripest of the seasons? Do not proud flowers blossom-the golden-rod, the orchis, the dahlia, and the bloody cardinal of the swamp-lands?

The fruits too are golden, hanging heavy from the tasked trees; the fields of maize show weeping spindles, and broad rustling leaves, and ears half glowing with the crowded corn; the September wind whistles over their thick-set ranks with whispers of plenty. The staggering stalks of the buckwheat grow red with ripeness, and tip their tops with clustering, tri-cornered kernels.