perform its normal functions, writing for the public he so disdains. Thus many a statesman, wearied and worn, satisfied of the hollowness of political ambition, and no longer enjoying its rewards, sighing for retirement and repose, nevertheless continues to wear his harness. Habit has tyrannised over all his actions; break the habit, and the thread of his life snaps with it! “Lastly, however, I am by no means sure that there is not in some few natures an inborn irresistible activity, a constitutional attraction between the one mind and the human species, which requires no special, separate motive power from without to set it into those movements which, perforce, lead to fame. I mean those men to whom we at once accord the faculty which escapes all satisfactory metaphysical definition—INGENIUM;—viz., the inborn spirit which we call genius. “And in _these_ natures, whatever the motive power that in the first instance urged them on, if at any stage, however early, that motive power be withdrawn, some other one will speedily replace it. Through them Providence mysteriously acts on the whole world, and their genius while on earth is one of Its most visible ministrants. But genius is the exceptional phenomenon in human nature; and in examining the ordinary laws that influence human minds we have no measurement and no scales for portents.” “There is, however,” said Tracey, “one motive power towards careers of public utility which you have not mentioned, but the thought of which often haunts me in rebuke of my own inertness,—I mean, quite apart from any object of vanity or ambition, the sense of our own duty to mankind; and hence the devotion to public uses of whatever talents have been given to us—not to hide under a bushel.”