flowers. But though such intent might be within my mind, could I tell how far I unconsciously exaggerated its earnestness—still less could I tell how far the intent was dignified by success? “Have I done aught for which mankind would be the worse were it swept into nothingness to-morrow?”—is a question which many a grand and fertile genius may, in its true humility, address mournfully to itself. It is but a negative praise, though it has been recorded as a high one, to leave “No line which, dying, we would wish to blot.” If that be all, as well leave no line at all. He has written in vain who does not bequeath lines that, if blotted, would be a loss to that treasure-house of mind which is the everlasting possession of the world. Who, yet living, can even presume to guess if he shall do this? Not till at least a century after his brain and his hand are dust can even critics begin to form a rational conjecture of an author’s or a statesman’s uses to his kind. Was it, then, as Gray had implied, merely the force of habit which kept me in movement? if so, was it a habit worth all the sacrifice it cost? Thus meditating, I forgot that if all men reasoned thus and acted according to such reasoning, the earth would have no intermediate human dwellers between the hewers and diggers, and the idlers, born to consume the fruits which they do not plant. Farewell, then, to all the embellishments and splendours by which civilised man breathes his mind and his soul into nature. For it is not only the genius of rarest intellects which adorns and aggrandises social states, but the aspirations and the efforts of thousands and millions, all towards the advance and uplifting and beautifying of the integral, universal state, by the energies native to each. Where would be the world fit for Traceys and Grays to dwell in, if all men philosophised like the Traceys and the Grays? Where all the gracious arts, all the generous rivalries of mind, that deck and animate the bright calm of peace? Where all the devotion, heroism, self-sacrifice in a common cause, that exalt humanity even amidst the rage and deformities of war, if, throughout well-ordered, close-welded states, there ran not electrically, from breast to breast, that love of honour which is a part of man’s sense of beauty, or that instinct towards utility which, even more than the genius too exceptional to be classed amongst the normal regulations of social law, creates the marvels of mortal progress? Not, however, I say, did I then address to myself these healthful and manly questions. I felt only that I repined, and looked with mournful and wearied eyes along an agitated, painful, laborious past. Rousing myself with an effort from these embittered contemplations, the charm of the external nature insensibly refreshed and gladdened me. I inhaled the balm of an air sweet with flowers, felt the joy of the summer sun, from which all life around seemed drawing visible happiness, and said to