Indeed, no book, however witty, lively, saltatory, can have the volant effects we covet, if it want substance and seriousness.  Substance, however, is to be widely distinguished from ponderability.  Oxygen is not so ponderous as lead or granite, but it is far more substantial than either, and, as every one knows, infinitely more serviceable to life.  The distinction is equally valid when applied to books and to men.  The “airy nothings” of imagination prove to be the most enduring somethings of the world’s literature; and the last lightness of heart may go with the purest truth of soul and the most precious virtue of intelligence.  All expressions carry the perpetual savors of their origin; and as brooks that dance and frolic with the sunbeams and murmur to the birds, light-hearted forever, will yet bear sands of gold, if they flow from auriferous hills, so any bubble and purl of laughter, proceeding from a wise and wealthy soul, will bear a noble significance.  In point of fact, some of the merriest books in the world are among the most richly freighted.  And as airy and mirthful books may be substantial and serious, so it is an effect very similar to that of noble and significant mirth that is produced upon us by the grandest pieces of serious writing.  Thus, he who rightly reads the “Phaedon” or “Phaedrus” of Plato smiles through all the depths of his brain, though no pronounced smile show on his face; and he who rightly reads the book of Cervantes, though the laughters plunge, as it were, in cascades from his lips, is earnest at heart, and full of sound and tender meditations.

If now, setting aside all books, whether pretending to gayety or gravity, that are simply empty and ineffectual, we inquire for the prime distinction between books light in a worthy and unworthy sense, it will appear to be the distinction between inspiration and alcohol,—­between effects divinely real and effects illusory and momentary.  The drunkard dreams of flying, and fancies the stars themselves left below him, while he is really lying in the gutter.  There are those, and numbers of those, who in reading seek no more than to be cheated in a similar way.  Indeed, to acknowledge a disagreeable fact, there is a very great deal of reading in our day that is simply a substitute for the potations and “heavy-handed revel” of our Saxon ancestors.  In both cases it is a spurious exaltation of feeling that is sought; in both cases those who for a moment seem to themselves larks ascending to meet the sun are but worms eating earth.

This celestial lightness, which constitutes the last praise and causes the purest benefit of books, comes not of any manner of writing; no mere vivacity, though that of a French writer of memoirs, though that of Arsene Houssaye himself, can compass it; by no knack or talents is it to be attained.  Perfect style has, indeed, many allurements, and is of exceeding price; but it is no chariot of Elijah, nevertheless.  Was ever style more delightful, of its kind, than