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One very ugly superstition, nevertheless, we must mention, of which these two men have been, in England, at least, the great hierophants; that, namely, on which we touched in our last,-the right of "genius" to be "eccentric." Doubtless there are excuses for such a notion; but it is one against which every wise man must set his face like a flint, and at the risk of being called a "Philister" and a "flunkey," take part boldly with respectability and this wicked world, and declare them to be, for once, utterly in the right. Still, there are excuses for it. A poet, especially one who wishes to be not merely a describer of pretty things, but a "Vates" and seer of new truth, must often say things which other people do not like to say, and do things which others do not like to do. And, moreover, he will be generally gifted, for the very purpose of enabling him to say and do these strange things, with a sensibility more delicate than common, often painful enough to himself. How easy for such a man to think that he has a right not to be as other men are; to despise little conventionalities, courtesies, even decencies; to offend boldly and carelessly, conscious that he has something right and valuable within himself, which not only atones for such defects, but allows him to indulge in them, as badges of his own superiority!

This has been the notion of artistic genius which has spread among us of late years, just in proportion as the real amount of artistic genius has diminished; till we see men, on the mere ground of being literary men, too refined to keep accounts, or pay their butchers' bills; affecting the pettiest absurdities in dress, in manner, in food; giving themselves credit for being unable to bear a noise, keep their temper, educate their own children, associate with their fellow-men; and a thousand other paltry weaknesses, morosenesses, self-indulgences, fastidiousnesses, vulgarities, for all this is essentially

vulgar, and demands, not honor and sympathy, but a chapter in Mr. Thackeray's Book of Snobs. Non sic itur ad astra. Self-indulgence and exclusiveness can only be a proof of weakness. It may accompany talent, but it proves that talent to be partial and defective. The brain may be large, but the manhood, the "virtus," is small, where such things are allowed, much more where they are gloried in. A poet such a man may be, but a world-poet never. He is sectarian, a poetical Quaker, a Puritan, who, forgetting that the truth which he possesses is equally the right and inheritance of every man he meets, takes up a peculiar dress or phraseology, as symbols of his fancied difference from his human brothers. All great poets, till Shelley and Byron, as far as we can discern, have been men especially free from eccentricities; careful not merely of the chivalries and the respectabilities, but also of the courtesies and the petty conventionalities, of the age in which they lived; altogether well-bred men of the world. The answer, that they learned the ways of courts, does not avail; for if they had had no innate good-breeding, reticence, respect for forms and customs, they would never have come near courts at all. It is not a question of rank and fashion, but of good feeling, common sense, unselfishness. Goethe, Milton, Spenser, Shakspeare, Rabelais, Ariosto, were none of them high-born men; several of them low-born; and only rose to the society of high-born men because they were themselves innately high-bred, polished, complete, without exaggerations, affectations, deformities, weaknesses of mind and taste, whatever may have been their weaknesses on certain points of morals. The man of all men most bepraised by the present generation of poets, is perhaps Wolfgang von Goethe. Why is it, then, that of all men he is the one whom they strive to be most unlike?

And if this be good counsel for the man who

merely wishes - and no blame to him to sing about beautiful things in a beautiful way, it applies with tenfold force to the poet who desires honestly to proclaim great truths. If he has to offend the prejudices of the world in important things, that is all the more reason for his bowing to those prejudices in little things, and being content to be like his neighbors in outward matters in order that he may make them like himself in inward ones. Shall such a man dare to hinder his own message, to drive away the very hearers to whom he believes himself to be sent, for the sake of his own nerves, laziness, antipathies, much more of his own vanity and pride? If he does so, he is unfaithful to that very genius on which he prides himself. He denies its divinity, by treating it as his own possession, to be displayed or hidden as he chooses, for his own enjoyment, his own self-glorification. Well for such a man if a day comes to him in which he will look back with shame and self-reproach, not merely on every scandal which he may have caused by breaking the moral and social laws of humanity, by neglecting to restrain his appetites, pay his bills, and keep his engagements; but also on every conceited word and look, every gaucherie and rudeness, every self-indulgent moroseness and fastidiousness, as sins against the sacred charge which has been committed to him; and determines with that Jew of old, who, to judge from his letter to Philemon, was one of the most perfect gentlemen of God's making who ever walked this earth, to become "all things to all men, if by any means he may save some."

MANSFIELD'S PARAGUAY, BRAZIL, AND THE PLATE. [Fraser's Magazine, November, 1856.]

THE "over-population" theory, so popular at the beginning of this century, has been fast falling into disrepute. That startling dogma of the science du néant, which used of old so majesterially to inform the human race that it was on the whole a failure, because "the number of human beings had always a tendency to increase faster than the means of subsistence," is now becoming, not merely questionable, but ludicrous. Started, so wicked wags affirm, by a few old bachelors, who, having no children themselves, bore a grudge against their "recklesslymultiplying" neighbors for having any,—it was suspected from the first on moral grounds; and may be now considered as fairly abolished on scientific ones. The moral philosopher answered to it, that it was impossible that the universe could be one grand mistake; human nature a disease; and the Creator of mankind one who but reverence forbids us to say what we should have a right to say of Him, were that theory a true one. The student of

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humanity asked, "Is it possible that the family life, which is the appointed method of educating the highest and holiest feelings of man, should be at the same time the normal cause of his final poverty

Paraguay, Brazil, and the Plate. Letters written in 1852-3. By C. B. MANSFIELD, Esq., M. A., of Clare Hall, Cambridge; with a Sketch of the Author's Life, by the Rev. C. KINGSLEY. Cambridge: Macmillan and

Co. 1856.

and starvation? Leave such inhuman dreams to monks and faquirs." The scientific agriculturist doubted the truth of the dogma more and more as his science revealed to him that the limit of productiveness, even upon old soils, had been nowhere reached. The sanitary reformer put in as a demurrer the important fact, that under proper arrangements that limit could never be reached; for as each human being (so he asserted) returned to the soil the whole elements of the food which he consumed, saving those which already existed in boundless abundance in the atmosphere, the productiveness of the soil ought to increase in exact ratio to the number of human beings concentrated on it. From these broad facts, the advocates of the science du néant took refuge in arguments about the cost of production. More skilful farming, more complete sewage, might certainly enable the land to support greater numbers; but not to do so profitably. The increased expense of the processes would interfere with the general rapid production of wealth. Here perhaps they had, on the whole, the best of the argument; and if it were any pleasure to them to prove the impotency of humanity, they must have enjoyed that lofty gratification awhile. One would have thought, certainly, that the business of the philosopher who desired the good of his fellow-creatures, was rather to show them what they could do, than what they could not; to preach progress, rather than the stationary state, and hope, rather than despair; to bend his mind, like a practical man, to the ascertaining by experiment what could be done towards increasing the sustenance of the peoples, instead of sending forth from his remote study, idola specûs, abstract maxims which only strengthened the dogged laziness which refused to till the land, and the dogged ignorance which refused either to use

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