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. "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. 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! "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 very 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. 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. No need to waste regrets upon him, that he never could be induced to give his attention to anything; he never had that which he is supposed to have lost. For attention it is though other qualities belong to this transcendent power-attention 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 whole train of its thoughts. -- 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 volcanic 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. 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 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. 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. 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 greater wonder in it, than there is in the towering of the pre-eminent forest tree, or in the flowing of the mighty and irresistible river, or in the wealth and the waving of the boundless harvest. COMPOSITION. Write a short sketch, showing the vulgar idea in regard to persons supposed to be geniuses. Take the first paragraph as your guide in this description. Show from what the lesson says, but in your own words, that the popular idea is false. Show from the example of three geniuses, say a painter, a poet and a mechanician, that talent without study will not suffice. IN SPIRITUAL ADVANTAGES OF CATHOLIC CITIES. N a modern city men in the evening leave their houses for a banquet; in a Catholic city they go out for the benediction. The offices of the Church, morning and evening, and even the night instructions, were not wanting to those who were still living in the world. The number of churches always open, the frequent processions, and the repeated instructions of the clergy, made the whole city like a holy place, and were, without doubt, the means of making multitudes to choose the strait entrance, and to walk in the narrow way. There are many who have no idea of the perfection in which great numbers, in every rank of society, pass their lives, in Catholic cities, not even excepting that capital which has of late been made the nurse of so much ill. But wherever the modern philosophy has created, as it were, an atmosphere, that which is spiritual is so confined, closed, and isolated, that its existence is hardly felt or known. The world appears to reign with undisputed possession, and that, too, as if it had authority to reign. And yet there are tender and passionate souls who have need of being unceasingly preserved in the path of virtue by the reign of religious exercises, who, when deprived of the power of approaching to the sources of grace at the hour their inclinations may suggest, are exposed to great perils, and who, perhaps, sometimes do incur, in consequence, eternal death. "Ah me, how many perils do enfold The righteous man, to make him daily fall!" House of Prayer, why close thy gates? Is there an hour in all nature when the heart should be weary of prayer? When man, whom God doth deign to hear in thee as his temple, should have no incense to offer before thy altar, no tear to confide to thee? Mark the manners, too, of the multitude that loiters in the public. ways of every frequented town. See how it meekly kneels to receive a benediction from the bishop who happens to pass by; and when dusk comes on, and the lamp of the sanctuary begins to burn brighter, and to arrest the eye of the passenger through the opened doors of the churches, hearken to the sweet sound of innumerable bells, which rises from all sides, and see what a change of movement takes place among this joyous and innocent people. The old men break off their conversation on the benches at the doors, and take out their rosaries; the children snatch up their books and jackets from the green in token that play is over; the women rise from their labor of the distaff; and all together proceed into the church, when the solemn litany soon rises with its abrupt and crashing peal, till the bells all toll out their last and loudest tone, and the adorable Victim is raised over the prostrate people, who then issue forth and retire to their respective homes in sweet peace, and with an expression of the utmost thankfulness and joy. The moderns in vain attempt to account for the difference of manners in these Catholic cities and in their own, by referring to their present prosperity and accumulation of wealth; but these cities in point of magnificence incomparably surpassed theirs, and with respect to riches, these were far superior, for peace was in their strength, and abundance in their towers. Questions: What is meant by "the offices of the Church"? What loes "life scholastic" mean? What is the meaning of "to choose the strait entrance," etc.? Give the paragraph of the Gospel in which this expression is used. Explain the first two sentences of the second paragraph. Does "the world" here mean the earth, or the people on the earth, or the kingdoms of the earth, or the pleasures and distractions of the earth? Does "passionate souls" mean “angry souls"? What does it mean? What is the lamp of the sanctuary? Write first paragraph, giving all the ideas in your own language. atmosphere inclination intellectual distaff consequence incomparably |