Let us no longer look upon this retired and peculiar class as useless members of our busy race.

There are mental as well as material labourers.

The first are not less necessary; and as they are much rarer, so are they more precious.

These are they whose "published labours" have benefited mankind--these are they whose thoughts can alone rear that beautiful fabric of social life, which it is the object of all good men to elevate or to support.

To discover truth and to maintain it,--to develope the powers, to regulate the passions, to ascertain the privileges of man, -- such have ever been, and such ever ought to be, the labours of AUTHORS! Whatever we enjoy of political and private happiness, our most necessary knowledge as well as our most refined pleasures, are alike owing to this class of men; and of these, some for glory, and often from benevolence, have shut themselves out from the very beings whom they love, and for whom they labour.
Upwards of forty years have elapsed since, composed in a distant county, and printed at a provincial press, I published "An Essay on the Manners and Genius of the Literary Character." To my own habitual and inherent defects were superadded those of my youth.