but, in fact, the poem was preparing and was writing the whole of the life, and when the poet sat down deliberately to dictate his words, they came from the well-stored treasury of a lifetime.

The worth of our production must often be in proportion to the labour bestowed upon it; no man has a right to expect that Chance will do for him what the ready hand, the shrewd eye, and the reflective brain, must do. Man must be intelligent for himself! Vicarious intelligence, vicarious virtue, vicarious piety, are all now the forsaken chimeras of another day. We trust that the time is now rapidly passing away, when the influence of a so-called educated class was, or is, most potential and mighty in society. It is to be hoped that a merely educated class will become more and more rare among us, when education shall not be the property of a class at all, when the key of knowledge shall not be (as to a great degree, even at present, it is) in the possession of a few, when Knowledge shall no longer be looked upon as the Mystery Maker, but the Mystery Destroyer.

The fearful mental darkness in which men are held by ignorance and superstition interferes with the most precious privilege of man, his mental freedom. The most important principles of man's life are handed over to the keeping of corporate bodies; the soul to the priests, the body to the doctors, the social orders to the lawyers. In a purer state of society, will not such men be desirous of disseminating their knowledge, and becoming popular illustrations and demonstrations of the truth and light within them? But a great number of the lowly classes have even thought themselves unfit for mental illumination; so far removed have they been from anything like self-reliance, that they have feared to be trusted with the lamp of Truth and of Knowledge; and have feared that they would not know how to use the Book and the Pen. And then the idea has been to many a favourite one, that even if a certain measure of instruction might be given to certain classes,

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yet there were, and are, things which they are wholly unable to apprehend to read, to write, to cast accounts, all these are very well; but not for a moment should it be supposed that the working-man can feel before the majesty of the marble, or the beauty of the canvas, the tenderness of the poetic line or image. True, it must ever be the case that many minds will be far in advance of others, even when all are educated, but the educated mind will be most prepared to admit the rights and advanced intelligence of its superior. The standard-the idea of mental training-should be exalted, it should be placed on a nobler pedestal. Now, by such illustrations as those following, the people may, perhaps, learn to respect themselves, when they behold the noble names associated with the great work of Labour; proofs these, that Genius is not the child of any class or school, that its irrepressible fires will burn forth in the breast of the shepherd, among the cold, bleak, northern mountains, tending his sheep; will carol in the heart of the poor Manchester operative at his loom, as truly as it will chasten and humble the spirit of the student, on the banks of the Cam and the Isis; or hang visions of pastoral beauty before the eyes of the poor child of nobility, born amidst all the tameness of Pall Mall, or St. James's, or opening his eyes first amidst the despotic horrors of Vienna or Petersburg.

Labour and Literature are not incompatible. The labouring body was intended to maintain the literary spirit, not only in the society and the race, but in every individual of that race; that life is false and wrong, in which the spiritual is so beaten down and lost that the rude material body presses its attention everywhere, and demands and receives all attention. Labour was intended but to warm and give life to the spiritual in man; like fuel, to be a means of scattering the genial rays of friendly heat over the spirit's abode; but now, alas! the fuel rages like the fire of an incendiary, and threatens to consume the entire spirit in its flame; and many have at last grown to the conviction that the two could not exist in neighbourhood together;

they have proclaimed a divorce between the two; what God commanded to exist together they have put asunder. It has not always been so. Biography records the instances of many noble-minded persons who make the body obedient to the will of the mind. "The Pursuit of Knowledge under Difficulties" details some of the miraculous efforts of mental industry, and it is impossible to read without catching some portion of the inspiration breathed forth from lives so heroic, and many of them so divine.

If we read the purpose of life aright, then it is surely the case that mind should reign supreme. The body has only the same temporary importance attached to the building of some illustrious tenant, and most buildings derive their importance, not from themselves, but from the dignity and character of the proprietor. Now, when labour for the body, to feed it, to pamper it, to dress it, is made the staple consideration of life, is there not plainly an inversion of all the true ends of life? It is as desirable to have a sound body as it is desirable to live in a sound house, not for itself, but for the sake of the tenant; but generally, the very measures which are taken to obtain such a building for the soul are defeated; the body, indeed, fares sumptuously, but the soul is oppressed with the superincumbent weight of sense, and all its myriad sensualities. To bring about a better state of things, can we appeal to the principle of emulation? can we exhibit the names of some of the worthy, and of others of the most lofty, who have known the pursuits of toil; who have combined, in some degree, the spiritual and the material? Some of these illustrations are quaint and curious, others are, as Dominie Sampson would say, "prodigious"; some exhibit a quiet, still life, a common-sense nature, not ranging to any high ambitions, not reaching forward to any lofty idea of being others present the picture of a soul struggling in toils it could not comprehend, and vexing itself beneath the agony of its own imperfection. Some lives, devoted to labour and to literature in combination, show, after all,

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much more worldly prudence than genius; and some, again, develop a genius so strong that it shook from it all the pleadings of worldly prudence, and hugged a darling poverty of the body to the highly endowed and wealthy soul. We do not advocate the disjuncture of Genius and Prudence; they are as compatible as Literature and Labour: the reflective nature will be cautious not to plunge itself or its dependents into any life which may impair its moral balance or their material happiness.

CHAPTER VII.

CHARACTERISTICS OF HUMBLE GENIUS.

MONG the resources of a great Nation there is then an element which, as an item worthy of the attention of Political Economists, has not received the attention it deserves. It is not Coal, it is not Iron, it is not Corn, it is not Land, it is not Water, it is not Climate; but it is one of the Productive Resources of a great Nation. You cannot walk over it, you cannot look at it, you cannot handle it, you cannot weigh it; but it exists, and exists without a quibble; without it every Nation would be ineffably poorer; without it some of our more productive forces would remain undeveloped; without it, in a mere material sense, we should not be the people we are; nor should we have the wealth and magnificence we have. Some readers may be shocked, especially ardent Political Economists, when we say this great productive force, which defies all calculation and yet founds immense fortunes, is Genius.

What would our country have been had not two or three great men lived? And yet those great men are not, as we have seen in the preceding chapter, reckoned by the Political Economist among the productive resources of the Nation; in fact, genius is incalculable. The effects of the sagacity of a statesman, or the strength of a warrior, but still more incalculable the developments of a brain, the happy invention of a mind; the teeming fertility of a Shakespeare, Scott, or Dickens; the immense ingenuity of