We write, for our writing is our friend, the inanimate paper is our confessional; we pour forth on it the thoughts that we could tell to no private ear, and are relieved, are consoled.

And if genius has one prerogative dearer than the rest, it is that which enables it to do honour to the dead,--to revive the beauty, the virtue that are no more; to wreathe chaplets that outlive the day around the urn which were else forgotten by the world! When the poet mourns, in his immortal verse, for the dead, tell me not that fame is in his mind! It is filled by thoughts, by emotions that shut out the living.

He is breathing to his genius--to that sole and constant friend which has grown up with him from his cradle--the sorrows too delicate for human sympathy! and when afterwards he consigns the confession to the crowd, it is indeed from the hope of honour--, honour not for himself, but for the being that is no more..