youth to strive hard for this great discipline; to pass sleepless nights for it, to give up to it laborious days; to spurn for it present pleasures; to endure for it afflicting poverty; to wade for it through darkness, and sorrow, and contempt, as the great spirits of the world have done in all ages and all times. I appeal to the experience of any man who is in the habit of exercising his mind vigorously and well, whether there is not a satisfaction in it, which tells him he has been acting up to one of the great objects of his existence? The end of nature has been answered: his faculties have done that which they were created to do, not languidly occupied upon trifles - not enervated by sensual gratification, but exercised in that toil which is so congenial to their nature, and so worthy of their strength. A life of knowledge is not often a life of injury and crime. Whom does such a man oppress? with whose happiness does he interfere? whom does his ambition destroy? and whom does his fraud deceive? In the pursuit of science he injures no man, and in the acquisition he does good to all. A man who dedicates his life to knowledge, becomes habituated to pleasure, which carries with it no reproach: and there is one security that he will never love that pleasure which is paid for by anguish of heart-his pleasures are all cheap, all dignified, and all innocent; and, as far as any human beings can expect permanence in this changing scene, he has secured a happiness which no malignity of fortune can ever take away, but which must cleave to him while he lives — ameliorating every good, and diminishing every evil of his existence. Sydney Smith. THE PROVINCE OF GENIUS. TASTE, if it mean anything but a paltry connoisseurship must mean a general susceptibility to truth and nobleness; a sense to discern, and a heart to love and reverence all beauty, order, goodness, wheresoever, or in whatsoever forms and accompaniments, they are to be seen. This surely implies, as its chief condition, not any given external rank or situation, but a finely-gifted mind, purified into harmony with itself, into keenness and justness of vision; above all, kindled into love and generous admiration. Is culture of this sort found exclusively among the higher ranks? We believe it proceeds less from without than within, in every rank. The charms of Nature, the majesty of Man, the infinite loveliness of Truth and Virtue, are not hidden from the eye of the poor; but from the eye of the vain, the corrupted, and self-seeking, be he poor or rich. In all ages, the humble minstrel, a mendicant, and lord of nothing but his harp and his own free soul, had intimations of those glories, while to the proud baron in his barbaric halls they were unknown. Such is our hypothesis † of the case. But how stands it with the facts? Are the fineness and truth of sense manifested by the artist found, in most instances, to be proportionate to his wealth and elevation of acquaintance? Are they found to have any perceptible relation either with the one or the other? We imagine not. Whose taste in painting, for instance, is truer or finer than Claude Lorraine's? And was not he a poor color-grinder; outwardly, the meanest of menials? * Connoisseurship, familiarity with works of art- often used, as here, in a contemptuous sense. + Hypothesis, supposition, something assumed for the sake of argu ment. Where, again, we might ask, lay Shakspeare's rent-roll; and what generous peer took him by the hand, and unfolded to him the " open secret" of the Universe; teaching him, that this was beautiful, and that not so? Was he not a peasant by birth, and by fortune little better; and was it not thought much, even in the height of his reputation, that Southampton* allowed him equal patronage with the zanies †, jugglers, and bearwards ‡ of the time? Yet compare his taste, even as it respects the negative side of things; for, in regard to the positive and far higher side, it admits no comparison with any other mortal's, compare it, for instance, with the taste of Beaumont and Fletcher, his contemporaries, men of rank and education, and of fine genius like himself. Tried even by the nice, fastidious, and, in great part, false and artificial delicacy of modern times, how stands it with the two parties; with the gay, triumphant men of fashion, and the poor vagrant link-boy? Does the latter sin against, we shall not say taste, but etiquette, as the former do? For one line, for one word, which some Chesterfield § might wish blotted from the first, are there not, in the others, whole pages and scenes which, with palpitating heart, he would hurry into deepest night? This, too, observe, respects not their genius, but their culture; not their appropriation of beauties, but their rejection of deformities-by supposition, the grand and peculiar result of high breeding! Surely, in such instances, even that humble supposition is ill borne out. The truth of the matter seems to be, that, with the culture of a genuine poet, thinker, or other aspirant to fame, the influence of rank has no exclusive, or even special, concern. For men of action, for senators, public speakers, political writers, the case may be different; but * Southampton, i.e. the Earl. Zanies, merry-andrews, buffoons. Bearwards, leaders of dancing-bears. 8 Chesterfield, who laid great stress on formal manners. of such we speak not at present. Neither do we speak of imitators, and the crowd of mediocre men, to whom fashionable life sometimes gives an external inoffensiveness, often compensated by a frigid malignity of character. We speak of men who, from amid the perplexed and conflicting elements of their every-day existence, are to form themselves into harmony and wisdom, and show forth the same wisdom to others that exist along with them. To such a man, high life, as it is called, will be a province of human life certainly, but nothing more. He will study to deal with it as he deals with all forms of mortal being; to do it justice, and to draw instruction from it, but the light will come from a loftier region, or he wanders for ever in darkness. Is he poor? So also were Homer and Socrates; so was Samuel Johnson; so was John Milton. Shall we reproach him with his poverty, and infer that, because he is poor, he must likewise be worthless? God forbid that the time should ever come, when he, too, shall esteem riches the synonym of good! The spirit of Mammon has a wide empire; but it cannot, and must not, be worshipped in the Holy of Holies. Nay, does not the heart of every genuine disciple of literature, however mean his sphere, instinctively deny this principle, as applicable either to himself or another? Is it not rather true, as D'Alembert has said, that for every man of letters, who deserves that name, the motto and the watch-word will be FREEDOM, TRUTH, and even this same POVERTY? and that, if he fear the last, the two first can never be made sure to him? Carlyle. YOUTH AND AGE. Ir has been observed, by long experience, that late springs produce the greatest plenty. The delay of blooms and fragrance, of verdure and breezes, is for the most part liberally recompensed by the exuberance and fecundity of the ensuing seasons; the blossoms which lie concealed till the year is advanced and the sun is high, escape those chilling blasts, and nocturnal frosts, which are often fatal to early luxuriance, preying upon the first smiles of vernal beauty, destroying the feeble principles of vegetable life, intercepting the fruit in the germ, and beating down the flowers unopened to the ground. I am afraid there is little hope of persuading the young and sprightly part of my readers, upon whom the spring naturally forces my attention, to learn from the great process of nature the difference between diligence and hurry, between speed and precipitation; to prosecute their designs with calmness, to watch the concurrence of opportunity, and endeavour to find the lucky moment which they cannot make. Youth is the time of enterprise and hope: having yet no occasion of comparing our force with any opposing power, we naturally form presumptions in our own favor, and imagine that obstruction and impediment will give way before us. The first repulses rather inflame vehemence than teach prudence; a brave and generous mind is long before it suspects its own weakness, or submits to sap the difficulties which it expected to subdue by storm. Before disappointments have enforced the dictates of philosophy, we believe it in our power to shorten the interval between the first cause and the last effect; we laugh at the timorous delays of plodding industry, and fancy that, by increasing the fire, we can at pleasure accelerate the projection.* * Projection, i.e. the corsummation of our wishes.. |