Though the difficulties and impediments that thus environ the path of genius seem like a heavy stone about the neck, yet they are very often like the stones used by the hardy pearl-divers, which enable them to reach their prize, and to rise enriched. Adversity is to genius what the steel is to the flint,--the fire concealed in the one is brought out only by contact with the other. "Hard is the task," says Coleridge, "to climb into the niches of Fame's proud temple; rough and cold is the road; but rougher and stronger than the rocks that strew it are the men who toil over it. Up they climb from the cottages and lowly homes of the world; over Alps and Alps do they stride, heaving the millstone of persecution from their towering heads, and bursting into the sunshine of glory, despite of all that circumstances could do to keep them down." The experience of all mankind shows that nothing great can be accomplished without labor. The original difference between men who have achieved greatness, and those who have died in obscurity, is, perhaps, after all, very inconsiderable; but the same ideas which in the latter died in their birth for want of culture, in the former, fostered, sustained and developed, by assiduous labor, flourished, and produced both flower and fruit. Uncultivated genius is a melancholy spectacle; it is like the light of a shooting star, brilliant, flashing, but evanescent, dazzling the eye for a moment, and then sinking into outer darkness; while cultivated genius, blazing with a steady, constant and pure flame, dispenses a surer and vivifying warmth far around it,--its light is not that of the meteor, but the planet. All history and all experience go to show that the bane of genius is not adversity, but prosperity. It was not Alpine toils, but "Capuan delights," that decimated the ranks of Hannibal's army, and wasted them away; it is not the cold north wind, but the genial sunshine, that destroys the mighty avalanche. The soul of genius, like the iron of the mine, must undergo the ordeal of fire, ere it can become steel. We might quote many examples of history to prove that this is a universal law of our nature. It is true that some have achieved greatness when their worldly circumstances were easy and affluent; but in such cases the gift of genius has been accompanied by a mental organization which imposed internal struggles, and hence the rule may be said to be without exceptions.