For full

often dull and inert in society, as the blazing meteor when it descends to earth is only a stone. success the two, genius and talent, should coexist in one mind in balanced proportions, as they did in Goethe's, so that they can play smoothly together in effective combination. The work of the world, even the higher ranges, being done by talent, talent, backed by industry, is sure to achieve outward sucCommonplace is the smooth road on which are borne the freights that supply the daily needs of life; but genius, as the originator of all appliances and aids and motions and improvements, is the parent of what is to-day common-of all that talent has turned to practical account.

cess.

It is one of the mysteries of our life that genius, that noblest gift of God to man, is nourished by poverty. Its greatest works have been achieved by the sorrowing ones of the world in tears and despair. Not in the brilliant saloon, furnished with every comfort and elegance; not in the library well fitted, softly carpeted, and looking out upon a smooth, green lawn, or a broad expanse of scenery; not in ease and competence, is genius born and nurtured; more frequently in adversity and destitution, amidst the harrassing cares of a straitened household, in bare and fireless garrets, with the noise of squalid children, in the midst of the turbulence of domestic contentions, and in the deep gloom of uncheered despair, is genius born and reared. This is its birth-place and in scenes like these, unpropitious, repulsive, wretched, have men labored, studied and trained themselves, until they have at last emanated

out of the gloom of that obscurity the shining lights of their times, become the companions of kings, the guides and teachers of their kind, and exercise an influence upon the thought of the world amounting to a species of intellectual legislation.

Genius involves a more than usual susceptibility to divine promptings, a delicacy in spiritual speculation, a quick obedience to the invisible helmsman; and 'these high superiorities imply fineness and fullness of organization. The man of genius is subject, says Joubert, to “transport, or rather rapture, of mind." In this exalted state he has glimpses of truth, beauties, principles, laws, that are new revelations, and bring additions to human power. Goethe might have been thinking of Kepler when he said, "Genius is that power of man which by thought and action gives laws and rules;" and Coleridge of Milton, when he wrote, "The ultimate end of genius is ideal;" and Hegel may have had Michael Angelo in his mind when, in one of his chapters on the plastic arts, he affirms that "talent cannot do its part fully without the animation, the besouling of genius."

remarks:

Great powers and natural gifts do not bring privileges to their possessors, so much as they bring duties. A cotemporary, in dilating on genius, thus sagely "The talents granted to a single individual do not benefit himself alone, but are gifts to the world; every one shares them, for every one suffers or benefits by his actions. Genius is a light-house, meant to give light from afar; the man who bears it is but the rock upon which the light-house is built."

Hath God given you genius and learning? It was

not that you might amuse or deck yourself with it and kindle a blaze which should only serve to attract and dazzle the eyes of men. It was intended to be the means of leading both yourself and them to the Father of lights. And it will be your duty, according to the peculiar turn of that genius and capacity, either to endeavor to promote and adorn human life, or, by a more direct application of it to divine subjects, to plead the cause of religion, to defend its truths, to enforce and recommend its practice, to deter men from courses which would be dishonorable to God and fatal to themselves, and to try the utmost efforts of all the solemn. ity and tenderness with which you can clothe your addresses, to lead them into the paths of virtue and happiness.

Thinkers.

THINKERS rise upon us like new stars-a few in a century. The multitude run after them, and, like Lazarus, eat the crumbs that fall from their table. They follow them by instinct; they adopt their theories and accept their thoughts at sight. Calvin rose and thought. What a multitude swallowed his hard, rocky thoughts, as though they were digestible mental food! Wesley rose, and another multitude followed him, much as Mohammedans followed their prophet. Swe denborg rose in the North, and straightway a cloud of

witnesses appeared about him to testify to all he wrote. Davis came above the horizan, and lo! an army follows in his train. So it is; men swallow whole what they eat, wheat or chaff, meat or bone, nut or shell. They do not masticate their mental food; they do not examine the facts they learn; they do not digest their knowledge. If they did we should not have schools of men, sects, parties, but one grand lyceum of individual thinkers; every one making his own use of his knowledge, forming his own conclusions, and working out his own kind and degree of culture. We read enough to have a generation of philosophers.

Dull thinkers are always led by sharp ones. The keen intellect cuts its way smoothly, gracefully, rap idly; the dull one wears its life out against the simplest problems. To perceive accurately and to think correctly, is the aim of all mental training. Heart and conscience are more than the mere intellect. Yet we cannot tell how much the clear, clean-cut thought, the intellectual vision, sharp and true, may aid even these. Some say that a man never feels till he sees, and when the object disappears, the feeling ceases. So we can. not exaggerate the importance of clear, correct think ing. We should eat, drink, sleep, walk, exercise body and mind, to this end. Just so far as we fail, we make dolts and idiots of ourselves. We cast away our natural armor and defense. The designing make us dupes; we are overreached by the crafty, and trodden under foot by the strong.

Undigested learning is as oppressive as undigested food; and as in the dyspeptic patient, the appetite for

food often grows with the inability to digest it, so in the unthinking patient, an overweening desire to know often accompanies the inability to know to any purpose. Thought is to the brain what gastric juice is to the stomach a solvent to reduce whatever is received to a condition in which all that is wholesome and nutritive may be appropriated, and that alone. To learn merely for the sake of learning, is like eating merely for the taste of the food. The mind will wax fat and unwieldy, like the body of the gormand. The stomach is to the frame what memory is to the mind; and it is as unwise to cultivate the memory at the expense of the mind as it would be to enlarge the capacity of the stomach by eating more food than the wants of the frame require, or food that it could not appropriate. To learn in order to become wise makes the mind active and powerful, like the body of one who is temperate and judicious in meat and drink. Learning is healthfully. digested by the mind when it reflects upon what is learned, classifies and arranges facts and circumstances, considers the relations of one to another, and places what is taken into the mind at different times in relation to the same subjects under their appropriate heads; so that the various stores are not heterogeneously piled up, but laid away in order, and may be referred to with ease when wanted. If a person's daily employments are such as demand a constant exercise of the thoughts, all the leisure should not be devoted to reading, but a part reserved for reflecting upon and arranging in the mind what is read. The manner of reading is much more important than the quantity. To hurry