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The temperate evening falls serene and kind.
In health the wiser brutes true gladness find.
See! how the younglings frisk ǎlong the meads,

As May comes on, and wakes the balmy wind;
Rampant with life, their joy all joy exceeds;

Yet what but high-strung health this dancing pleasaunce breeds? 7. There are, I see, who listen to my lay,

Who wretched sigh for virtue, yet despair.

"All may be done," methinks I hear them say,
"Even death despised by generous actions fair,—
All, but for those who to these bowers repair!
Their every power dissolved in luxury,

To quit of torpid sluggishnèss the lair,

And from the powerful arms of sloth get free'Tis rising from the dead :- -Alas!-it can not be!" 8. Would you, then, learn to dissipate the band

Of these huge threatening difficulties dire,
That in the weak man's way like lions stand,
His soul appall, and damp his rising fire?
Resolve-resolve! and to be men aspire.
Exert that noblèst privilege,-alone

Here to mankind indulged;-control desire :
Let godlike Reason, from her sovereign throne,
Speak the commanding word, I WILL!-and it is done.

JAMES THOMSON.

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IV.

53. STUDY.

HE favorite idea of a genius among us, is of one who never studies, or who studies, nobody can tell when-at midnight, or at odd times and intervals-and now and then strikes out, at a heat, as the phrase is, some wonderful production. This is a character that has figured largely in the history of our literature, in the persons of our Fieldings, our Savages,' and our Steeles 2

1 Richard Savage, a poet of considerable merit, born 1698, in London, died 1743. He was intimate with Johnson, who wrote an admirable Life of him.

Richard Steele, the principal author of the "Tattler," the "Spectator," the "Guardian," and other periodical papers, an Irishman by birth, born in 1671, and died in 1729.

"loose fellows about town," or loungers in the country, who slept in ale-houses and wrote in bar-rooms, who took up the pen as a magician's' wand to supply their wants, and when the pressure of necessity was relieved, resorted again to their carousals.

2. Your real genius is an idle, irregular, vagabond sort of personage, who muses in the fields or dreams by the fireside; whose strong impulses-that is the cant of it-must needs hurry him into wild irregularities or foolish eccentricity; who abhors order, and can bear no restraint, and eschews all labor : such a one, for instance, as Newton or Milton! What! they must have been irregular, else they were no geniuses!

3. "The young man," it is often said, "has genius enough, if he would only study." Now the truth is, as I shall take the liberty to state it, that genius will study, it is that in the mind which does study; that is the věry nature of it. I care not to say that it will always use books. All study is not reading, any more than all reading is study. Study, says Cicero,' is the voluntary and vigorous application of the mind to any subject.

4. Such study, such intense mental action, and nothing else, is genius. And so far as there is any native predisposition about this enviable character of mind, it is a predisposition to that action. This is the only test of the original bias; and he who does not come to that point, though he may have shrewdness, and readiness, and parts, never had a genius.

5. No need to waste regrets upon him, as that he never could be induced to give his attention or study to any thing; he never had that which he is supposed to have lost. For attention it is -though other qualities belong to this transcendent powerattention it is, that is the very soul of genius: not the fixed eye, not the poring over a book, but the fixed thought. It is, in fact, an action of the mind which is steadily concentrated upon one idea or one series of ideas,-which collects in one point the rays of the soul till they search, penetrate, and fire the whōle train of its thoughts.

1 Magician, (ma jish′an), one who is skilled in the art and science of putting into action the power of spirits or the secret operation of natural causes.

of Rome, a distinguished orator, writer, rhetorician, and philosopher, born at Arpinum in B. c. 106, beheaded B. C. 43.

" Trans cend' ent, surpassing.

? Marcus Tullius Cicero, Consul very excellent.

6. And while the fire burns within, the outward man may indeed be cold, indifferent, and negligent,-absent in appearance; he may be an idler, or a wanderer, apparently without aim or intent; but still the fire burns within. And what though "it bursts forth" at length, as has been said, "like volcănic fires, with spontaneous, original, native force?" It only shows the intenser action of the elements beneath. What though it breaks like lightning from the cloud? The electric fire had been collecting in the firmament through many a silent, calm, and clear day.

7. What though the might of genius appears in one decisive blow, struck in some moment of high debate, or at the crisis of a nation's peril? That mighty energy, though it may have heaved in the breast of a Demosthenes,' was once a feeble infant's thought. A mother's eye watched over its dawning. A father's care guarded its early growth. It soon trod with youthful steps the halls of learning, and found other fathers to wake and to watch for it,—even as it finds them here.

8. It went on; but silence was upon its path, and the deep strugglings of the inward soul marked its progress, and the cherishing powers of nature silently ministered to it. The elements around breathed upon it and "touched it to finer issues." The golden ray of heaven fell upon it, and ripened its expanding faculties. The slow revolutions of years slowly added to its collected treasures and energies; till in its hour of glory, it stood forth embodied in the form of living, commanding, irresistible eloquence!

9. The world wonders at the manifestation, and says, "Strange, strange, that it should come thus unsought, unpremeditated, unprepared!" But the truth is, there is no more a míracle in it, than there is in the towering of the preeminent forest-tree, or in the flowing of the mighty and irresistible river, or in the wealth and the waving of the boundless harvest.

DEWEY.

ORVILLE DEWEY, D.D., was born in Sheffield, Berkshire County, Massachusetts, March 28th, 1794. His father was a farmer, occupying a highly respectable position as a citizen. He entered Williams College, in his native county, at the age of seventeen, where he gained a high position. He was thorough in all his studies. Rhetoric he cultivated with uncommon perseverance. He was critical and severe upon his own literary productions, revising and pruning with

1 De mos' the nes, the greatest of Greek orators, was born at Athens, B. C. 382, and died B. C. about 322.

His orations present to us the models which approach the nearest to perfection of all human productions.

a fidelity which gained him preeminence in his class, as already attaining a style of classic strength and purity. He was graduated in 1814, with the highest honors of the institution, having received the appointment of Valedictorian. He pursued his professional studies at Andover Theological Seminary. In 1823 he received and accepted a call to become pastor of a Unitarian Church in New Bedford, where he remained ten years. During this period he lectured frequently, and wrote for the press. He first visited Europe for the improvement of his health in June, 1833, where he spent a year. After his return, he published some results of his travels in a volume entitled, "The Old World and the New." This book contains some of the best criticisms on painting, on music, on sculpture, on men, things, and places; and more than all, views of society, of government, of the tendency of monarchical institutions, and of the condition of the European people, which are sound, comprehensive, and deeply interesting. On his return from Europe he was settled over "The Second Congregational Unitarian Society" of New York. In 1842 he again went abroad for his health, taking his family with him. He passed two years in France, Italy, Switzerland, and England. In 1848, his health again failing, he dissolved his connection with his church. Since that time he has occasionally preached and lectured in nearly all the large cities of the Union. All, except his late writings, are bound in one volume, published at London, in 1844. His productions since that period are published in New York, in three volumes, except his latest, "The Problem of Human Destiny," which appeared in 1864. Dr. Dewey has great depth of thought. His imagination is rich, but not superfluous; ready, but not obtrusive. His style is artistic and scholarly. His periods are perfectly complete and rounded, yet filled by the thought; the variety is great, yet a symmetry prevails; and in general we find that harmony between the thoughts and their form which should always obtain.

B

SECTION X.

I.

54. LETTERS.

LESSED be letters!-they are the monitors, they are also the comforters, and they are the only true heart-talkers. Your speech, and their speeches, are conventional; they are molded by circumstances; they are suggested by the observation, remark, and influence of the parties to whom the speaking is addressed, or by whom it may be overheard. Your truëst thought is modified half through its utterance by a look, a sign, a smile, or a sneer. It is not individual: it is not in'tegral: it is social and mixed,-half of you, and half of others. It bends, it sways, it multiplies, it retires, and it advances, as the talk of others presses, relaxes, or quickens.

2. But it is not so with Letters :-there you are, with only

the soulless pen, and the snow-white, virgin paper. Your soul is measuring itself by itself, and saying its own sayings: there are no sneers to modify its utterance,-no scowl to scare ; nothing is present but you and your thought. Utter it then freely-write it down-stamp it-burn it in the ink!-There it is, a true soul-print!

3. Oh, the glory, the freedom, the passion of a letter! It is worth all the lip-talk of the world. Do you say, it is studied, made up, acted, rehearsed, contrived, artistic? Let me see it then; let me run it over: tell me age, sex, cir'cumstances, and I will tell you if it be studied or real; if it be the mērèst lip-slang put into words, or heart-talk blazing on the paper.

4. I have a little packet, not very large, tied up with narrow crimson ribbon, now soiled with frequent handling, which far into some winter's night I take down from its nook upon my shelf, and untie, and open, and run over, with such sorrow and such joy, such tears and such smiles, as I am sure make me, for weeks after, a kinder and holiër man.

5. There are in this little packet letters in the familiar hand of a mother what gentle admonition-what tender affection! God have mercy on him who outlives the tears that such admonitions and such affection call up to the eye! There are others in the budget, in the delicate and unformed hand of a loved and lost sister;-written when she and you were full of glee, and the best mirth of youthfulness: does it harm you to recall that mirthfulness? or to trace again, for the hundredth time, that scrawling postscript at the bottom, with its 's so carefully dotted, and its gigantic t's so carefully crossed, by the childish hand of a little brother?

6. I have added latterly to that packet of letters: I almost need a new and longer ribbon; the old one is getting too short. Not a few of these new and cherished letters, a former Reverie has brought to me; not letters of cold praise, saying it was well done, artfully executed, prettily imagined-no such thing; but letters of sympathy-of sympathy which means sympathy.

7. It would be cold and dastardly work to copy them; I am too selfish for that. It is enough to say that they, the kind writers, have seen a heart in the Reverie-have felt that it was real, true. They know it: a secret influence has told it. What matters it, pray, if literally there was no wife, and no dead child,

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