he has realized or seen. The idea burns within him, and will not let him rest. As with the prophet of old, the word is as a fire in his bones, and he feels constrained to give it utterance. In that high utterance it is only the better, the spiritual nature of man that speaks; the passions, the appetites, the baser part of man, are silent. Their voice is not heard, or they appear only with that mark of reprobation set upon them, which they always bear in the presence of the moral sense.

High genius has an affinity with virtue, and even when borne down, as it sometimes is, by the weakness of humanity, it seldom desires to propagate the plague. And when men of genius sin, God makes holiest use of them, though themselves vessels of wrath. No man ever preaches more powerfully the blessedness of goodness or the deep damnation of vice, than the depraved man of genius. He is among the brotherhood of literary men what Judas was among the Apostles. While they are mightily spreading the conquests of the truth, there goes with them a voice hardly less persuasive from the temple where that lost and miserable man flung down the

price of innocent blood, and from the field where he hung himself in despair.

The man of genius moreover, speaks in the audience of that very inspiration whence he draws his own wisdom. He addresses himself to that moral and spiritual tribunal, which he reverences in his own soul. This fact alone bars the expression of all that is of a low and corrupting tendency, and makes the gifted author the minister of righteousness and not of sin. The result of this is, that the moral standard of even the most indifferent literature is higher than the common standard of life and practice, and thus is continually elevating the ideal in man, exalting his conceptions of the true, the pure, the just, the honorable, the refined, the courteous, by which he is compelled to judge his own actions, and after which he is perpetually prompted to strive. Do not the common mass then, thus receive, as if by revelation, higher and nobler ideas than they otherwise would have obtained, the image of a purer and better life than they could have derived from the imperfect state of things around them?

Such is the high mission of literature and

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literary men. They are the missionaries of truth and morality, wisdom and refinement. Education is yearly bringing mass after mass of society within the sphere of their regenerating influence. It is difficult to overestimate the habit of reading in its influence upon the character. It leads directly to thought and reflection; and when you have taught a man to think, you have raised him to a higher grade of existence, you have elevated him from a sensual to an intellectual being. You have given him resources within himself, which enable him to unbend and recreate his powers without resorting to those sensual gratifications which are so full of snares to innocence and peace. You have put him in a way to remedy most of the evils by which he is oppressed, for you have prepared him to reflect upon and become sensible of their causes.

Is it objected that the masses cannot become readers and thinkers because their time is consumed in toil? I answer, such instances as the Massachusetts blacksmith, who, besides supporting a family by his sturdy strokes, has made himself master of most of the languages of the civilized world, altogether refute such

an objection. Is it said, they cannot procure the books? Their surprising cheapness and abundance take away the validity of the excuse. Besides, in this very thing lies the cure of poverty. Men are poor, in this country at least, from thoughtlessness, improvidence and vice, not from any inexorable necessity of their condition. Were all the laboring classes like the Massachusetts blacksmith, we should see little either of poverty or suffering in this most favored land.

Literature and education, elevating the standard of morality, purifying and strengthening public opinion, what wonders are they destined to achieve !

To arouse and kindle the intellect of this people, to send this reading spirit into all classes, nothing is so much needed as a national literature. I mean by this, works of genius, taste and learning, which shall breathe the spirit of our society, and delineate man and nature as they appear in this new world. The interest that our people can take in foreign manners, institutions and modes of thought, must be but languid at best; and if nothing else is given them they will not read at all. We have materials for a national

literature. Man is not here a mere fac-simile of what he is in the old world. Society is not here the reproduction of well known forms. The human race is here commencing a new career, under circumstances untried. Human nature is receiving a new development. It will naturally find new modes of thought and expression, or in other words have a literature of its own. We have indeed our Mount Vernon, where virtue and greatness rest in glory and in peace. To that spot patriotism will make her pilgrimage, to meditate and admire, as long as moral excellence shall be held in honor among men. But we have as yet no Avon or Abbotsford, or Newstead, we have no spot consecrated by genius, and rendered classic by the emanations of immortal intellect. All these things are to come. But that they will come, I can no more doubt than I can my own existence. What form the productions of American genius are destined to take it is impossible to predict. Whatever form they do take will be national, will reflect our peculiarities, or they never can take the place of a popular and universal literature.

As it is, almost our only literature is our