Cambridge Pieces

ous to the dread with which children are affected upon entering a dark room, is that which most men entertain at the contemplation of death." Jeremy Taylor says, "Tell them it is as much intemperance to weep too much as to laugh too much"; he does not say, "All men will acknowledge that laughing admits of intemperance, but some men may at first sight hesitate to allow that a similar imputation may be at times attached to weeping."

I incline to believe that as irons support the rickety child, whilst they impede the healthy one, so rules, for the most part, are but useful to the weaker among us. Our greatest masters in language, whether prose or verse, in painting, music, architecture, or the like, have been those who preceded the rule and whose excellence gave rise thereto; men who preceded, I should rather say, not the rule, but the discovery of the rule, men whose intuitive perception led them to the right practice. We cannot imagine Homer to have studied rules, and the infant genius of those giants o