lay aside all rule until they get footing on some fact, to them indubitable, from whence they may safely advance upwards. Even the rude advice, to take care of themselves, might be most useful to men of genius were they to consider it as addressed to them as a class. In eastern towns, dogs organize themselves in bands, and each band falls on any stranger dog intruding himself into its territory. Classes of men act, with a superficial difference, very much in the same way. Men of genius stand, from their excess of sympathy, at a peculiar disadvantage in their conflict with the world, yet it is specially of importance to them that they should be able freely to order their relations, for playing adverse forces against each other may save years of miserable creeping; therefore, they also might support each other better than they have done. Occasionally, in the case of an individual, the world is convinced that the effort of his genius is to him a serious and sacred thing, but it has yet to believe that the effort of the intellect of entire humanity is to be regarded as so serious and sacred that any untrue use of it for individual ends is a crime committed against the human race, and never can the world so believe until men of that diviner mind, which alone can perceive and shadow forth the relations of Man to the universe in which he dwells, shall be seen, not merely as individuals, or for a lifetime, but in compact group and through weary centuries, standing apart, recognizing each other as the only interpreters between Destiny and Man, and coldly refusing to acknowledge as poets, painters, statesmen, divines, or as in any sense Artists, the successful showmen who make a business of deluding the vulgar imagination by new and clever arrangements of "things seen," but arrangements expressing nothing "unseen and spiritual." Perhaps, also, in these days when freshwater polypes and sea anemones are accurately observed and elaborately reported on, some little attention might be profitably given to the real nature of Infanti perduti, and as much trouble be expended on them as is devoted to the conservation of poodle dogs and rare kinds of plants. For though often, like Jonah, they may be unwilling to deliver their unwelcome message until the indignant crew cast them overboard, not always is there a friendly monster to bear them safe to land, and many Life not greater than its Reflex. 167 perish miserably whom a little friendly help might easily have saved. When Shakya Buddha walked over Indian plains, hidden treasures, according to the Thibetan books, raised their heads and exclaimed:-"O Mighty One! come and take us" -the most affecting instance of hero-worship upon record! From Buddha and his friends to Chatterton, compelled even to buy his pennyworth of arsenic, what a range! I think the hidden treasures knew their own interest better than did the English of the eighteenth century, and doubt the rule which holds success in struggle with the world to be necessary to prove a man's greatness, as if the proof lay in greedily taking rather than in nobly giving. The treasures in Buddha's time were wise, and knew to whom they ought to yield; in our day the treasures also give themselves up, but unwisely, to bearers of divining rods which have long ceased to divine. In other words, men know their need of spiritual teaching of the various degrees, and readily sacrifice much to obtain it; but much of men's effort is mistake, and they never almost get any return for their outlay; the little real teaching they get comes gratis, and perhaps might be increased by outlay in the right direction. So much has been said in this paper of genius as restorative, and as implying new and painful mental states, that I cannot conclude without dissenting from the opinion that life in spontaneous unconscious evolution, is, relatively to us, or to life's progress (for, in an absolute sense, there is neither great nor little, except interchangeably Klein das Grosse, gross das Kleine), greater than its reflex. As the flower on the mountain-side, and the crystal in the vein of the rock, may be more lovely and more perfect to us than the mountain itself, so individual souls may be, as it were, the flowers and highest perfection of the great existence of which they are a part, while these souls again have their flower and highest perfection in the ideal life which they project beyond the confines of the real. The highest life known to us exists not in the ages of our past, not in the distant stars, which look so blue and beautiful, while probably they are full of wildly conflicting forces, but in our own imaginings and longing dreams, which can harmonize all antagonisms, and shadow forth a perfect world. It is even this draping glorifying power of imaginative thought which renders possible our conscious recognition of things existent. Omnipotent Phantasy, that divinest goddess, is the true mater gloriosa and Queen of Heaven, the mistress of souls and benefactress of mankind, ever gathering our knowledge and our ignorance into shapes of beauty, weaving the rainbow across our path, and veiling the dark deep with lucent azure. From the cradle to the grave, what were the children of men but for her? Before the child's gaze, where the speculation is but small, she forms this our world as before the clear earnest eyes of the bravest man; and when the strong thought is about to slumber for ever in the wearied brain, the heart of feeling beats faintly, and the dim eye is closing, she is there, painting the blessed fields, on the awful darkness, with the very mists of death. In her gift is an ordered world. How often, in her highest exercise, has she formed it anew for the races of men !-now giving, as centre, some misty Olympus, among the peaks of which are gods; now some unfathomable source of creative power, itself unmoved; now some omnipotent ruler-" Jehovah, Jove, or Lord." Slight her not, poor Thinker !—and worship at her nod, for without her, there is only the blackness of darkness for ever the melancholy waste of waters on which no Columbus has found the New Land. Painful and dangerous is her service, spes et præmia in ambiguo-certa, funera et luctus; but even to him who is destroyed by it there is compensation; for, in the very perception of genius-in its love penetrating to all stars, its sight, which vindicates existence and hails the golden age-there is a pure joy, an exceeding sense of glory, which can raise and transfigure it above the sufferings of earth, enabling it to sing, with Apollo I am the eye with which the universe Beholds itself, and knows itself divine; A. W. 1 PROGRESS OF BRITAIN IN THE MECHANICAL ARTS. "The greatness of the British nation is not owing to war and conquests, to enlarging its dominions by the sword, or subjecting the people of other countries to our power; but it is all owing to TRADE, to the increase of our commerce at home, and the extending it abroad."-DEFOE. IT is a favourite assertion with some writers that, if the position of a country, its climate, soil, and physical features be given, the history of the people who shall inhabit it may be inferred beforehand, almost as certainly as the propositions of Euclid are inferred from his definitions.1 Britain cannot help being a great country, because the physical conditions on which national greatness depends are developed in her to an extent unknown elsewhere. If the globe be divided into two hemispheres, of which the one shall contain nearly all the land on the surface of the earth, and the other scarcely anything but water, it will be found that the metropolis of Britain is only a few miles distant from the pole of the former, and is therefore manifestly marked out by nature as the centre of the world's commerce. Her climate, also, neither too hot. in summer, nor too cold in winter, and seldom too dry or too moist, is fitted to support a hardy and active race of men, whose energies would be weakened in warmer, or rendered 1 "Give me," says M. Cousin, "the map of a country, its configuration, its climate, its waters, its winds, and all its physical geography; give me its natural productions, its flora, its fauna, and I pledge myself to tell you, a priori, what the inhabitants of that country will be, and what place that country will take in history, not accidentally, but necessarily; not at a particular epoch, but at all periods of time; in a word, the thought which that country is formed to represent." torpid in colder regions. The easy communication maintained, by means of rivers, between her interior and the sea, the immense amount of water-power in all parts, and the mineral treasures in which she abounds, prove that she was intended to be both a commercial and manufacturing community. Other nations may possess some of these advantages, but none can boast of them all to the same extent; and in proportion as their physical condition resembles that of Britain, they will be great and prosperous like her. This commonplace delusion has gained a footing in men's minds; and a prejudice so flattering to the national pride, if once established, is not easily rooted out. One thing, however, has been overlooked-the mind which turns these advantages to account. Nations do not fall from their pre-eminence because their mineral treasures are exhausted, or the physical features of the country have changed, but because the energy of mind, which once administered the affairs of state or stimulated the enterprise of the citizens, has decayed. Spain has greater advantages than Britain for carrying on commerce with the rest of the world; she is not situated precisely at the centre of the land hemisphere, indeed, but she lies nearer the great trading regions of the earth, the Indies, the Tropics, the States of America, and the southern countries of Europe. History proves that her climate is equally well fitted to rear hardy and enterprising men, and the treasures of her soil, though of less value than those of Britain, are very considerable. Three centuries ago her people might have held similar language to that which is now current among us, and none could have foretold at that time the utter prostration of her power which has since taken place. The cotton manufacture, which has greatly contributed to raise Britain to her present eminence as a commercial nation, once flourished in Spain, whose inhabitants cultivated the plant in their own country, and might have procured it in any quantities from the New World, which they discovered.1 Something more than the position and climate of a country determines its history: outward relations alone do not form the characters of men or 1 1 In 1740, only 17,350 tons of iron were obtained from all the furnaces of England and Wales; in 1717, 7540 tons were imported from abroad, and of these 2744 tons were furnished by Spain. |