being, calls him forth again, with all the activities of youth gathering within him, to engage in the employments of the estate, for which the life on earth was preparing him.

A train of contemplations running in this vein, and inspired by nature, will certainly produce in the mind the most pleasant and favourable impressions. Man's distinguishing quality is, thought; and whatever other pleasures he may rejoice in, in this life, yet his happiness must be of a meagre measure, if it is not the result, in many instances, of contemplation. The richest quality of bliss, is that which flows from the interior, which is spiritual. Sensuality has its pleasures, as they are called; but they are not the pleasures that are challenged by true manhood. Man is of most large desires. He feels his soul swelling out almost to infinity, and reaching forward to compass surpassing joys; and it is only when the soul turns in on itself, and thinks of subjects that are associated with its destiny, that the mind calms down into peace, or more properly, rises up stately, into the regions of its true and lasting life. Mutability is here, there, be the element of life.

every where. Change seems to The changings of the seasons, bring life to the year; and the changes and phases of manhood's being, are the channels of useful and pleasurable life to those whose thoughts engage those changes in close contemplation. And the true. man will shrink from no theme that is legitimately presented to him, whether connected with his present being, or more intimately associated with his destiny. However bitter, a passing thought bestowed by others on some relative necessities of life, may be; the true man will extract pleasure

from their contemplation, because he will derive instruction. And death, the dark angel that hovers amid the clouds of the winter of life, is not a dread prospect to him. He reasons here, as we have reasoned in respect of the winter of the year; that he shall slumber under the spell and charm of the angel, only until youth is again renewed, and life again opens from immortal buds, and begins its growth into an immortal fulness.

Genius.

BY HENRY D. MOORE.

THE definitions which have been given of Genius, are as numerous and varied almost as the men, who have been regarded as possessing it. Every age and clime of the world, has produced such men, and their names are registered in the chronicles of their times, out of compliment to genius, whatever it may be-and the works which it has accomplished through them. Poets are always geniuses, in some people's estimation, particularly if they are antiquated in the style of their shirt-collar, or indifferent in pecuniary obligations, or drinkers of brandy, or eaters of opium. If they rise at twelve o'clock, break their fast with gin and sugar and a biscuit, dine at five, and sup at eleven P. M., whatever else they may or may not be, they are sure to be geniuses in the eyes and mouths of hundreds; for genius with them is the synonym of idleness and foolery. "A genius is a man who knows how to do every thing but that which is useful," is a rendering of the term in its application, given by certain boors, in a certain play. Some mothers will frighten their children by telling them that a genius is coming up the street, just as effectually as by

telling them a horrific ghost story; and many an old maiden, will shake her head ominously at the sound of his name; they are regarded as being of necessity bad men, and are to be feared and shunned accordingly. In truth, and serious truth too, a most vulgar and popular opinion is abroad in the mind of the world respecting men of genius, which the rapid and vast spread of intelligence has failed, up to the present date, to eradicate. The faithful biography of Genius remains to be written; the. material for such biography is abundant and truthful, though treasured only by a few of the thinking great ones. Such a biography would astound the world of readers into silence, and crumble away forever those false opinions which have obtained, respecting the noblest, the bravest, the truest, the wisest, and the most benevolent of men. However, a little tarnish will deprive the most precious substance of its worth, according to the ideas of some persons, not thinking, that that must be a famous metal that will reveal its inner radiance through whatever dross may surround it.

The mistake in general is here; most people judge of genius by externals, thinking that it originates in the exterior man, in eccentric semblances, in the deportment; and the more wayward, eccentric and cometary a man is, he is, by so much, the more deserving of the distinctive title of genius. It is not the poesy or the fire of the man--the interior life, the baptized spirit, the warm and gushing soul, the impatient kindlings of instant and continued raptures, the revellings of the highest ranges of mental power, in the midst of the most spiritual and burning ecstacies, the constant

poising of a calm being, on a strong and daring wing, in the midst of whirling elements and warring splendours, whose fragments, like glittering and swift driven shafts, fly in the heaven of imagination,-none of these indicate to some persons the nature, the office and the works of genius. The source of genius must be traced to hidden springs in the innermost chambers of the soul, and not attempted to be discovered in unique garbs or loose practices.

Men of genius are also men of faults; but not necessarily so any more than other men. Their faults are not the effects of genius, but flow from a

"Poor, corrupt, sinfu' nature,"

as Burns has it, which nature is common to all men. Elliot, the Corn Law rhymer, hath the following, very much to the point here:-" Perhaps no falsehood has been more frequently repeated, than that men of genius are less fortunate and less virtuous than other men: but the obvious truth that they who attempt little are less liable to failure than they who attempt much, will account for the proverbial good luck of fools. In our estimate of the sorrows and failings of literary men, we forget that sorrow is the common lot; we forget, too, that the misfortunes and the errors of men of genius are recorded, and that, although their virtues may be utterly forgotten, their minutest faults will be sure to find zealous historians." Elliot was a keen observer, a hard thinker, a blunt speaker and writer, a genuine philosopher, and withal a genius. He did not