Literary Extracts.

LITERARY EXTRACTS .

BLAKE THE PAINTER . Blake was not a pi-actical man , and , very much owing to his impracticability , had to struggle all his life with poverty and neglect , notwithstanding his genius . He was greatly beloved by his friends , but ho had queer notions ; he was apt to quarrel , and the subjects which ho chose for the exhibition of his art were not likel

y to allure the public of his day . The title of one of his pictures was , "A spirit vaulting from a Cloud to turn and wind fiery Pegasus . Tho horse of intellect is leaping from the cliffs of memory and reasoning ; it is a barren waste of Lock aud Newton . " Is any body likely to be attracted by such a title ? Another picture is entitled "The spiritual form of Nelson guiding Leviathan , in

whose wreathings aro enfolded tho nations ofthe earth . " The companion picture to this is described as "The spiritual form of Pitt guiding Behemoth : he is that angel who , pleased to perform the Almighty's orders , rides on the whirlwind , directing the storms of war : ho is ordering the reaper to reap the vine of the earth , and the ploughman to plough up the cities and towers . " It is in such titles as these , and in some parts of tho artist ' s conduct , that the indications of insanity are recosmised . For conduct ,

what should wo say of the man who would take his little back garden in this grimy metropolis for the Garden of Eden , and , to the horror of all his neighbours , might be seen in the costume of our lirst parents sauntering about it , his wife , bearing him company ? Mr . Butts called ono day upon Blake , and found him with his wife in tho summer house , all innocent of clothing . " Come in , "

cried Blake , " it ' s only Adam and Eve , you know . " Husband and wife had been reciting passages from the "Paradise Lost , " and , to enter more fully into the spirit of the poet's verso , they had dressed , or rather undressed for their parts . Blako had a great opinion of tbo gymnosophists , and would insist on tho virtues of nakedness . Nor was he alone in his views . Ho got bis wife to

accept them undonbtingly ; and we are told of a family in the upper ranks of society , contemporary with Blake , though unknown to him , who had embraced the theory of " philosophical nakedness . " Believing iu the speedycoming of a golden ago similar to the pristine state of innocence , the ciders in this family taught the children to run naked about tho house for a few hours every day , and in this condition the little innocents would run aud

open tho door to Shelley . Their mother followed tho same practice more privately , locking herself in her room ; but she declared to her friends that the habit of going about every day for a time in a state of nudity did her much moral good . " She felt the better for it—so innocent during the rest of the day . " —Macmillan ' s Magazine .

Mus . LIRMPER BEGINS . — "Ah ! it ' s pleasant to drop into my own easy chair my dear though a little palpitating what with trotting upstairs and what with trotting clown , and why kitchen-stairs should all be corner stairs is for the builders to justify though I do not think they fully understand their tvado and never did , else why the sameness and why not more convenience and

fewer draughts and likewise making a practice of laying the plaster on too thick I am well convinced which holds the damp , and as to chimney pots putting them on by guesswork like hats at a party and no more knowing whafc _ their effect will be upon the smoke bless you than I do if so much , except that it will mostly be either to send it down your throat in a straight form or give ib a '

twist before it goes there . And what I says speaking as I find of those new metal chimneys all manner of shapes ( there's a row of of ' em at Miss Wozonham ' s lodginghouse lower down on the other side of the way ) is that they only work your smoke into artificial patterns for you before you swallow it and that I'd quite as soon swallow mine plain , the flavour being the same , not to

mention the conceit of putting up signs on the top of your house to show the forms in which you take your smoke into your inside . Being here before your eyes my dear in my own easy-chair in my own quiet room in my own Lodging House Number Eighty-one Norfolkstreet , Strand , London , situated midway between the City and St . James ' s — if anything is where it used

to be with these hotels calling themselves . Limited , but called Unlimited by Major Jackman , rising up everywhere , and rising up into flag-staffs where they can ' t go any higher , but my mind of those monsters is give me a landlord's or landlady ' s wholesome face when I come off a journey , aud not a brass plate with an electrified number clicking out of it which it's not in nature

can be glad to see mo ancl to which I dont want to be hoisted like molasses at the Docks and left there telegraphing for help with the most ingenious instruments but quite in vain—being hero my dear I have no call to mention that I am still in tho Lodgings as a business hoping to die in the same and if agreeable to tho clergy partly read over at Saint Clement ' s Danes and concluded in Hatfield churchyard when lying once again by my poor Lirriper ashes to ashes and dust to dust .- —Mrs . Lirripcr ' s Legacy .

LEECH ' S LITTIE EMEND . —We have said that Mr . Leech's life ancl character are in his own " Sketches of Life and Character . " Any anecdote that can be told of him has its double in his own works . Suppose we give this anecdote in the words of Mr . Charles Dickens . He was very fond of a boy known to Mr . Dickens , an extraordinary small boy , but of great spirit , who was a

midshipman in tho navy . " Whenever this boy came home from a cruise , " says Mr . Dickens , " he ancl Leech , and never anybody else , used to go out in great state , and dine at the Garrick Club , and go to the play , and . finish in an exemplary way with kidneys and harmony . On . the first of these occasions , the officer came out so frightfully small , that , Leech told us afterwards , he was

filled with horror when he saw him eating his dinner at the Garrick with a large knife . On tho other hand , be felt that to suggest a small knife to an officer and a gentleman would , bo an unpardonable affront . So , after meditating for some time , he felt that his course was to object to the club knifes as enormous and gigantic ; to remonstrate with the servant on their huge proportions ,

ancl with a grim dissatisfaction to demand small ones . After which he ancl the officer messed with great satisfaction , and agreed that things in general were running too large in England . " But incidents like these are precisely what we find pictured in his pages ; and his friends , pointing to sketch after sketch , can say , " I told him that ; " "This happened to himself ; " "I was present when he came upon so-and-so . —Gornliill Magazine . "

HAPPINESS . —Trifles make up the happiness or the misery of mortal life . The majority of men slip into their graves without having encountered on their way thither any signal catastrophe or exaltation of fortune or feeling . Collect a thousand of ignited sticks into a heap , and you have a bonfire which may been seen over three counties . If , during thirty years , tho annoyances connected with

shirt-buttons found missing when you are hurriedly dressing for dinner , were gathered into a mass and endured at once , it would be misery equal to a public execution . If , from the same space of time , all the little titillations of a man ' s vanity were gathered into one lamp of honey and enjoyed at once , tho pleasure of being crowned would not perhaps be much greater . If the

equanimity of an ordinary man bo at tho mercy of trifles , how much more will the equanimity of the man of letters , who is usually tho most sensitive ofthe race , and whose peculiar avocation makes sad work with the fine tissues of the nerves .. Literary composition , I take it , with the exception of the crank , in which there is neither hope nor result , is the most exhausting to which a human , being can apply himself . — Dreamtliorp .