might be quoted in the three per-cents, be heard of in consols, and even rise into authorities among the lordly potentates on 'Change. But the age quickens with no such wonders. Its spirit exhibits itself in other signs than those which declare for its Genius. In England, from whence this book proceeds, we are delighted with no such revelations. It is only where the literary man adapts himself, as in the case of Lord Brougham, to what are called, by a narrow judgment, the practical or merely useful wants of the community, that he is admitted to be an authority, and to any degree influences the working spirit of the nation. In France, there is, to be sure, a greater apparent proximation of the one thing to the other;-but the appearance is delusive. It is a fact only to the eye. There, we do occasionally behold the poet and the novelist in power;-the sentimentalist Chateaubriand; the orientalist La Martine; the subtle and speculative novelist Hugo;-busy in the toil of wielding the politics of the nation,-stirring, with the rest, in its everyday necessities, and, if we may so style them, every-day philosophies. But how little is it the case, even in France, when we take into the estimate the vast and wholly disproportionate influence possessed, in the same departments, by other classes, in whose number and poetical insensibility, Schiller found such epigrammatic occasion for marvel.* Besides, where we do find literary men in power, exercising authority, swaying the popular judgment, or wielding its will,-whether in England or upon the Continent,-it is rather in spite, than because, of their literary endowments. These are yielded to the occasion,-are sacrificed to what appears the popular requisition. Ambitious of the time, such authors deliver themselves to its daily uses. Their labors regard political objects merely, and these generally of temporary expediency. They write for parties. They philosophize for factions. Their very songs are about grain, and rents, and cattle, and corn-laws. Their books are political systems, and problems, allegorized for effect;-a cunning mode by which to salt and season those political propositions, which might otherwise offend the vulgar swallow. Such The apostrophe to the Muse,-which may be rendered thus: Wert thou nought, sweet Muse, to me; The thousands who are nought to thee." are the labors of Dr. Bowring, Ebenezer Elliott, Harriet Martineau, and, measurably, of one very far superior to all of these, Thomas Carlyle. These, it may be conceded, do exercise some obvious influence upon the spirit of the age,even while it is yet passing. They help its progress in one or more of the nations, and their voices are heard with attention in others. But they do not so much govern as belong to its movement. They are its weights rather than its levers. Some exception may be made in favor of Carlyle. But, up to this period, his spirit is rather felt, than followed, by the party. Indeed, his genius is one to threaten and to warn, rather than to guide. These, however, are so many isolated names, and, in due proportion as they rise and rank in the estimation of the mass, do they lose their influence in the literary circles. And, naturally so. It is by a partial surrender of letters that they are admitted to political position. It is by folding up their wings, which have borne them to a certain point of view, that they are enabled to rest upon the eminence in sight of the multitude. Other names might be mentioned, such as Talfourd and Macaulay,--men, who, eminent also in the law, are permitted an occasional exercise in letters. But they suffer to the Muse few liberties. They close the door upon her in public, turn away from her more familiar blandishments, and, when they meet her in the highways or the fields, it is with something of apprehension, and a constant look over the shoulder, lest the liaison should be detected by the unfriendly eyes of that age, whose spirit, it is insisted, is identical with its literary genius. Were these authors openly to assert the genius of the age, while working under the influence of its multitudinous spirit, it would be very apt to forfeit for them that moderate degree of confidence by which they are suffered to work at all. However much we may desire to think otherwise, we are estopped by too many woful histories. There is a too-regularly recurring experience against the hope, even from the days of Homer. It is a history in all ages,--not varied in the progress of any people. The spirit of the age is one thing,--its genius another. Else should we never hear of the giant minds of a century living unknown and in neglect. We say nothing of their living in poverty, for, unless it be absolute want and destitution, poverty is, perhaps, one of the smallest cares of genius. To feed well, and go clad in fine linen, is doubtless a very pleasant condition;--but there is that about the great intellect which makes it comparatively indifferent to this sort of social compensation. Its cravings are of another sort. It asks for consideration. Possessed of great truths, its first and only care is to procure a hearing. It demands an audience, attention, appreciation,--and, these accorded, there is no more humble creature in all God's creation, than the being whom he has endowed with the glorious gift of genius. It is in the denial of this hearing that he is arrogant,--that he offends where proud men would have him solicit. Denied to be a teacher, he becomes a prophet, and, like the great Jewish masters, similarly denied, denounces the wrath of heaven, and the scorn of men, upon the blind and bigoted generations which refuse to hear. Such men as these are willing to abandon their earthly possessions and all earthly securities, in the prosecution of those claims which they seldom have had allowed while living. Such has been the history of all the poets;-in the estimation of more prudent people, the most profligate wretches that ever lived ;-taking no more care of the needful, than if every mother's son of them were the special care of heaven, and sure of daily quails and manna from above. What, indeed, is earthly food to that ambitious nature which toils only for utterance, and dreams only of immortality? But the blindness, the injustice, the neglect, which deny that the genius of an age shall be its moving spirit also,-which vainly calls upon its people,-doomed, Cassandra-like, while blasted with the full consciousness of inspiration, to meet with nothing but scorn and rejection from those whom its prophecies would save!―This is the torture, worse than poverty or death, to which the endowing and imaginative minds of a people have always been subject from the earliest records of history. We fear, indeed, if the truth were known, that even your mere professors of the liberal arts,-those who have no boast of being bothered with any divine intuitions, who are simply men of elegant tastes and of moderate talent, and who, in spite of the profession of letters, still keep a worldly eye to the main chance, and never commit a solecism in good manners by speaking out the keen consciousness of an offensive truth;-even these share somewhat in the discredit of an occupation, the foundations of which have been laid by genius. They have less force in the social movement than any of the numerous orders which constitute society. They make its gentlemen, perhaps, but not its leaders. They are conspicuous in its pageants and processions. You will find them busy where tributary resolutions are to be adopted. You will hear of them in Lyceums and Academies. But the moving springs and wheels of the great machine are seldom entrusted to their hands; and then, only in due degree with the assimilation of their toils to those of the ordinary citizen. There are some inherent difficulties in the way of a great man, highly endowed and truly original. He is beyond his time, which its spirit cannot reach, does not comprehend, and invariably repudiates. As the time is always in possession of the past,-knows the extent of its achievements, and is fortified with all its knowledge, so, any real greatness must result from the elevation of the individual above the requisitions of his day. Not to be thus elevated, indeed,-to be readily comprehended and acknowledged, to the full measure of his claims,-is prima facie evidence of his want of greatness, since, as the flood sweeps onward,-as the age is always pressing forward to the abandonment of its ancient landmarks, so, that intellect which could not plant itself above the dead level of the rest, must be submerged and utterly swallowed up from sight in the spread and rise of the still expanding waters. The certain and superior greatness always plants his standard far in advance of his people. He lights the beacon on the dim hills in the distance, to which they are approaching. He is always the day's march in advance of the multitude he leads. To bring his people up to his point of view and vision,-to show them the promised land, to direct them by parables, dark and mysterious, which they only obey through a consciousness of their own inferior vision,-is the work of centuries; and, like Moses, having led them to a certain point, the one great mind is snatched away, yielding up his charge to another. Succeeding generations at length reach the spot where his mantle has fallen: This is the history of social progress. It is proverbial that no age has ever duly honored or understood the worth of contemporary greatness. Its spirit has never informed that of its period. We are speaking now of periods having some claims to civilization. In barbarous times, when the multitude was unsophisticated, and a conscious poverty of resource kept in due subjection the natural self-esteem of the individual, the Bard was an authority. In later periods, distinguished by a certain degree of acquisition, he was He rather a person to be feared. He was an annoyer. conflicted with existing authorities, which the multitude naturally honored, and it was more grateful to presumption to question and despise the teacher of a new truth, than to toil in the humble but becoming work of understanding him. It is a circumstance, however, to be remarked, that the age, even when it has most denied, seems always to have had an instinct consciousness of the presence of a great man. This is shown by its hostility. How it has hated, how feared, how persecuted him! What pains has it taken to silence his voice, to subdue his spirit, to compel his apostacy! To what mocks, what bonds, what tortures, has it not subjected him! How it has trampled upon his ashes,— how lied about his memory! Men take no such pains about a fool. Nothing short of superiority provokes them to this malice; and they thus revenge upon greatness the hurts of self-esteem. Their fury is spent upon the mortal, in the vain attempt to baffle the divine, nature. This, you will say, is an ancient history. Scarcely so ancient as modern. Not less true to-day than yesterday. The same warfare is still carried on between the same parties, though with less cruel and desperate issues. The living generations still war against one order of its superior intellects. It is in the experience of every community. Let us suppose a history with which most of us are familiar. We will not take an extreme instance. Suddenly, in the compass of a country village, a boy springs into sight who claims to be in possession of a secret. He claims to have endowments which are not of ordinary acquisition. His ways are not like those of other boys. He engages in none of their sports. He goes apart from them, loves to muse in secret places, and gloats over a book as one suddenly in possession of a great treasure. Things attract and refresh his eye, which other boys scarcely perceive. He delights in the woods, in long wanderings among the trees, in the song of birds, in the sounds of waters. Soon, he begins to lisp in songs of his own, and to dilate in fresh and fanciful histories. These he must repeat to other ears; and, with mixed feelings of exultation and bashfulness, he calls some favorite,--some lad whom he singles from the rest because of traits which he deems to be in common with his own,-to hearken to his childish performances. The friend betrays his secret, perhaps, makes light of his achievements.—and |