open it if you please, and need not open it unless you please. It is a resource against ennui, if ennui should come upon you. To have the resource and not to feel the ennui, to enjoy your bottle in the present, and your book in the indefinite future, is a delightful condition of human existence. There is no place, in which a man can move or sit, in which the outside of a book can be otherwise than an innocent and becoming spectacle. Touching this matter, there cannot, I think, be two opinions. But with respect to your Venuses there can be, and indeed there are, two very distinct opinions. Now, sir, that little figure in the centre of the mantelpiece,—as a grave paterfamilias, Mr. Crotchet, with a fair nubile daughter, whose eyes are like the fish-pools of Heshbon, -I would ask you if you hold that figure to be altogether delicate?

MR. CROTCHET.

The Sleeping Venus, sir?

Nothing can

be more delicate than the entire contour of the figure, the flow of the hair on the shoulders and neck, the form of the feet and fingers. It is altogether a most delicate morsel.

THE REV. DR. FOLLIOTT.

Why, in that sense, perhaps, it is as delicate as whitebait in July. But the attitude, sir, the attitude.

MR. CROTCHET.

Nothing can be more natural, sir.

THE REV. DR. FOLLIOTT.

That is the very thing, sir. It is too natural: too natural, sir: it lies for all the world like I make no doubt,

the pious cheesemonger, who recently broke its plaster fac-simile over the head of the itinerant vendor, was struck by a

certain similitude to the position of his own sleeping beauty, and felt his noble wrath thereby justly aroused.

MR. CROTCHET.

Very likely, sir. In my opinion, the cheesemonger was a fool, and the justice who sided with him was a greater.

THE REV. DR. FOLLIOTT.

Fool, sir, is a harsh term: call not thy brother a fool.

MR. CROTCHET.

Sir, neither the cheesemonger nor the justice is a brother of mine.

THE REV. DR. FOLLIOTT.

Sir, we are all brethren.

MR. CROTCHET.

Yes, sir, as the hangman is of the thief; the 'squire of the poacher; the judge of the libeller; the lawyer of his client; the statesman of his colleague; the bubble-blower of

the bubble-buyer; the slave-driver of the negro; as these are brethren, so am I and the worthies in question.

THE REV. DR. FOLLIOTT.

To be sure, sir, in these instances, and in many others, the term brother must be taken in its utmost latitude of interpretation: we are all brothers, nevertheless. But to return to the point. Now these two large figures, one with drapery on the lower half of the body, and the other with no drapery at all; upon my word, sir, it matters not what godfathers and godmothers may have promised and vowed for the children of this world, touching the devil and other things to be renounced, if such figures as those are to be put before their eyes.

MR. CROTCHET.

Sir, the naked figure is the Pandemian Venus, and the half-draped figure is the

Uranian Venus; and I say, sir, that figure realizes the finest imaginings of Plato, and is the personification of the most refined and exalted feeling of which the human mind is susceptible; the love of pure, ideal, intellectual beauty.

THE REV. DR. FOLLIOTT.

I am aware, sir, that Plato, in his Symposium, discourseth very eloquently touching the Uranian and Pandemian Venus: but you must remember that, in our Universities, Plato is held to be little better than a misleader of youth; and they have shewn their contempt for him, not only by never reading him, (a mode of contempt in which they deal very largely,) but even by never printing a complete edition of him; although they have printed many ancient books, which nobody suspects to have been ever read on the spot, except by a person attached to the