to be a clay-pit or a pottery near the birthplace of the young sculptor; and wherever a poet or a musician is born, there will be an odd volume of Spenser, or a cracked spinnet, in the house. There is something more than a mere predisposition in the soul of a great genius, (if, without offence, we may guess at these cryptic mysteries,) which compels him into the path he must tread. If he deny and frustrate it, the whole face of nature looks at him sorrowfully and with a tender yet half-contemptuous reproach. He cannot cast away from him this badge of the friendship of the supernal powers; if he try, it is brought back to him next day, like the ring of Polycrates. "Here stand I: I cannot help it," says stout Martin Luther, almost regretfully, exiled from his quiet convent-cell by this superior will. Is not this the meaning of having a genius,— an expression of a truth which has had all its sharp edges worn off and has become a mere phrase, in coming down to us from the simpler and more inseeing day when it was invented?-The supernatural calling carries a pain with it, too. The ancients were wont to say that he who saw a god must die. Perhaps this only meant, that he who has gazed deepest into the vast mysteries of being, and held closest converse with the Eternal Love, is overpowered by the yearning and necessity to speak that which can never be wholly spoken, and which yet seems ever hovering in fiery words upon the tongue. The music of the mighty universe

crowds through the slender reed, and shatters it with the very excess of quivering melody.

JOHN.

Certain it is, that, without this law of genius, which compels it to utter itself as it best may, very few great words had been spoken, or great deeds done. Every great man is more or less tinged with what the world calls fanaticism. Fanaticism, in its ill sense, is that which makes a man blind to perceive the falseness of an error; the fanaticism of genius will not let him be persuaded that there is any lie in truth. The disbelief of the whole world cannot shake his faith that he is God's messenger, which upbears him as upon the Rock of Ages. He knows that the whole power of God is behind him, as the drop of water in the little creek feels that it is moved onward by the whole weight of the rising ocean. Unsupported by any of earth's customs or conventions, he learns to lean wholly on the Infinite. The seal of God's commission is set within, and has no ribbons about it to make it respectable in the eyes of the many. Most men are fearful of visitings from the other world, and, set on by those whose interest lies mainly in this, they look with distrust, and often with ignorant hate, on him who converses with spirits.

PHILIP.

Yes, men always deny the messenger of God at

first.

The spiritual eye, like that of the body, un

til taught by experience, sees objects reversed, and makes that seemingly come from hell, which has in truth but just descended, warm and fragrant, from the heart of God. But Time can never put Eternity off more than a day; swift and strong comes the fair to-morrow, and with it that clearer perception of the beautiful, which sets another fixed star in the bright coronet of Truth.

JOHN.

But when the world is at last forced to believe the message, it despitefully entreats the bearer of it. In most cases men do not recognize him till the disguise of flesh has fallen off, and the white wings of the angel are seen glancing in the full sunshine of that peace, back into whose welcoming bosom their flight is turned. If they recognize him earlier, it is with a scurvy grace. Knowing that hunger is the best taskmaster for the body, and always using to measure spirit by the laws of matter, they conclude that it must be the sharpest spur for the soul also. They hold up a morsel of bread, as boys do to their dogs, and tell the prophet to speak for it. They know that he has a secret to tell them, and think they can starve it out of him, as if it were an evil demon.

PHILIP.

It is true enough that hunger is the best urger of the soul; but it is the hunger, not of the body, but of the soul, which is love. A state of rest and

quietude in the body is the most conformable to the happiness and serenity, and so to the undisturbed utterance, of the soul. Love, which is its appetite, quickens the soul of the seer,

"And then, even of itself, it high doth climb;

What erst was dark becomes all eye, all sight,”

as Dr. More phrases it. The distracting cares and dunnings of want are not the best nurses of genius; it has self-dependence enough without their prompting. It may take other sorrows and thank God for them, for sorrow alone can unlock the dwelling of the deeper heavenly instincts; but there is bitter enough in its cup, always, without the world's squeezing its spare drops of rue in.

JOHN.

Perhaps actual want may be inconsistent with that serenity of mind which is needful to the highest and noblest exercise of the creative power; but I am not ready to allow that poverty is so. Few can dignify it like our so admirable prose-poet, whose tales are an honor even to the illustrious language they are written in; few can draw such rich revenues of wise humbleness from it as our beloved R. C.; few can win a smile from it by his Lambish humor, and that generous courtesy which transmutes his four-pence into a bank-note in the beggar's eyes, like S.; but there is none for whom it has not some kind lesson. Poverty is a rare mistress for the poet. She alone can teach him what

a cheap thing delight is ; to be had of every man, woman, and child he meets; to be gathered from every tree, shrub, and flower; nay, to be bought of the surly northwestern wind himself, by the easily-paid instalments of a cheerful, unhaggling spirit. Who knows the true taste of buns, but the boy who receives the annual god-send of one with Election-day? Who ever really went to the theatre, but Kit Nubbles? Who feels what a fireside is, but the little desolate, barefooted Ruths, who glean the broken laths and waste splinters after the carpenters have had a full harvest? Who believes that his cup is overflowing, but he who has rarely seen any thing but the dry bottom of it? Poverty is the only seasoner of felicity. Except she be the cook, the bread is sour and heavy, and the joint tough or overdone. As brisk exercise is the cheapest and warmest overcoat for the body, so is poverty for the heart. But it must be independent, and not of Panurge's mind, that to owe is a heroic virtue. Debt is like an ingenious mechanical executioner I have read of somewhere, which presented the image of a fair woman standing upon a pedestal of three steps. When the victim mounted the first, she opened her arms; at the second, she began to close them slowly around him; and at the third, she locked him in her iron embrace forever. On the other hand, however, poverty has its bad side. Poverty in one hour's time shall transport a man from the warm and fruitful climate of sworn broth