This every man is entitled to; this every man contains within him, although, in almost all men, obstructed, and as yet unborn. The soul active sees absolute truth; and utters truth, or creates. In this action, it is genius; not the privilege of here and there a favorite, but the sound estate of every man. In its essence, it is progressive. The book, the college, the school of art, the institution of any kind, stop with some past utterance of genius. This is good, say they, let us hold by this. They pin me down. They look backward and not forward. But genius looks forward: the eyes of man are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead: man hopes: genius creates. Whatever talents may be, if the man create not, the pure efflux of the Deity is not his;· cinders and smoke there may be, but not yet flame. There are creative manners, there are creative actions, and creative words; manners, actions, words, that is, indicative of no custom or authority, but springing spontaneous from the mind's own sense of good and fair.

On the other part, instead of being its own seer, let it receive from another mind its truth, though it were in torrents of light, without periods of solitude, inquest, and self-recovery,

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so it be sternly subordinated. Man
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Arabian proverb says, "A fig tree, lo
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It is remarkable, the character of th we derive from the best books. The us with the conviction, that one na and the same reads. We read the ve of the great English poets, of Chauce vell, of Dryden, with the most mod with a pleasure, I mean, which is in caused by the abstraction of all time

verses.

There is some awe mixed wi

some past world, two or three hundred years ago, says that which lies close to my own soul, that which I also had wellnigh thought and said. But for the evidence thence afforded to the philosophical doctrine of the identity of all minds, we should suppose some preëstablished harmony, some foresight of souls that were to be, and some preparation of stores for their future wants, like the fact observed in insects, who lay up food before death for the young grub they shall never see.

I would not be hurried by any love of system, by any exaggeration of instincts, to underrate the Book. We all know, that, as the human body can be nourished on any food, though it were boiled grass and the broth of shoes, so the human mind can be fed by any knowledge. And great and heroic men have existed, who had almost no other information than by the printed page. I only would say, that it needs a strong head to bear that diet. One must be an inventor to read well. As the proverb says, "He that would bring home the wealth of the Indies, must carry out the wealth of the Indies." There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we

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Every sentence is doubly significant sense of our author is as broad as We then see, what is always true, th seer's hour of vision is short and ra heavy days and months, so is its re chance, the least part of his volume. cerning will read, in his Plato or Shaks that least part, only the authentic of the oracle; — all the rest he rejec never so many times Plato's and Sha

Of course, there is a portion of read indispensable to a wise man. History science he must learn by laborious rea leges, in like manner, have their ind office, to teach elements. But they highly serve us, when they aim not t to create; when they gather from far of various genius to their hospitable by the concentrated fires, set the hear youth on flame. Thought and kno natures in which apparatus and prete nothing. Gowns, and pecuniary fo though of towns of gold, can never the least sentence or syllable of wi this, and our American colleges will their public importance, whilst they g every year.

the scholar should be a recluse, a valetudinarian, as unfit for any handiwork or public labor, as a penknife for an axe. The so-called

'practical men' sneer at speculative men, as if, because they speculate or see, they could do nothing. I have heard it said that the clergy, - who are always, more universally than any other class, the scholars of their day, are addressed as women; that the rough, spontaneous conversation of men they do not hear, but only a mincing and diluted speech. They are often virtually disfranchised; and, indeed, there are advocates for their celibacy. As far as this is true of the studious classes, it is not just and wise. Action is with the scholar subordinate, but it is essential. Without it, he is not yet man. Without it, thought can never ripen into truth. Whilst the world hangs before the eye as a cloud of beauty, we cannot even see its beauty. Inaction is cowardice, but there can be no scholar without the heroic mind. The pre

amble of thought, the transition through which it passes from the unconscious to the conscious, is action. Only so much do I know, as I have lived. Instantly we know whose words are loaded with life, and whose not.

The world, this shadow of the soul, or