burse such acquisitions as could be turned to account.
Who, fond of literature, shall not sympathize with such an inquirer—his hopes, discoveries, disappointments? How often is he befriended by chance! A date, a name, a fact, an allusion, a reference, however slight, even to an unpromising object, suddenly starts from some obscure corner to gladden his eye and heart, and give assurance that he who works diligently shall not work in vain. Even when positive facts fail, there may be ground for plausible conjecture. A slender clue may track a labyrinth. History is made up of such discoveries, accidents, or combinations; biography is often so. Haud inexpertus loquor. Yet how often is it that some destroying agent, or rather barbarian, careless of the interest, or ignorant of the value of written memorials of the facts of life or history, have consigned them to destruction![1] And how many of those slighter details, occurrences, projects, or intrigues, that link small matters with great—how many points of manner, conduct, temper, or peculiarity that make up the sum of human character, are thus lost, of which we would gladly be informed! But, under every disadvantage, the hard student, like the daring soldier, must occasionally adventure
- ↑ Almost at the moment of penning this, I had heard from my late friend, Commissioner Charles Phillips, that the whole, or nearly the whole, of the papers of an eminent Irish peer, statesman, and lawyer, had heen committed to the flames soon after his death. Many names, in many ways, would, it seems, have heen compromised by their preservation. Surely, in this indiscriminate paper-massacre, the curious and unoffending could have been separated from the obnoxious? I had not long before heard of a similar immolation of a series of letters of a deceased literary man, descriptive of London life, letters, and society, because a few were objectionable in portions of the details!
