A Possessed Author

The success of many greac authors is undoubtedly due to the mannea in which fcliey give themselves up solely to the tepio in hand. jt is told of Balzao that when about to vvrite a book he shut hiinself up in a darkoned room, from which he did uot emerge until his work was completod. (Jarlyle, if we are to believe a correspondent of the Boston Commonwealth, has gone a step further and lost his own identity in that of the hero of his latest wovk : "Carlyle has in hisstudy, nineteen different portra'ts of Frederick, and more than two thousand books in raany languages, whioh bear upon the life he is writing. Every other pioture, and every book not bearing on that life, be has excluded from his study. The spiritualists, of vvhioli there are not a few in London, say that he is possessed by the spirit of Frederick, aud that he is not responsible for the things he writes now about slavery or anything else, and that when the life is completed he will awaken as from a spell, and be clothed in his right mind."