What comfort may not an author thus bring upon his fellows! Go out into the country and enter that lowly cottage,—you will find perhaps some mother weeping over little Nell, and drawing consolation from traits in the character which remind her of a darling child now in heaven. Thus by ten thousand links does an author bind himself to the hearts of his fellows, until at length he comes to be loved as we would love a brother. And often the precepts he instils awaken the dormant good in other hearts. Lowell has finely expressed this in one of his earliest poems— “Noble thoughts like thistle-seed, Wing’d by nature, fall and breed From their heedless parents far, Where fit soil and culture are.” This fellowship for his kind glows in every line of Lowell. Open his pages where you may, the eye lights on some kindly word, some noble thought, some sentiment overflowing with the milk of human kindness. There is a fine sonnet now before us which expresses the feeling of brotherhood in true Saxon words— “Why should we ever weary of this life; Our souls should widen ever, not contract, Grow stronger, and not harder, in the strife, Filling each moment with a noble act: If we live thus, of vigor all compact, Doing our duty to our fellow-men, And striving rather to exalt our race Than our poor selves, with earnest hand or pen, We shall erect our names a dwelling-place Which not all ages shall cast down agen; Offspring of Time shall then be born each hour, Which, as of old, earth lovingly shall guard, To live forever in youth’s perfect flower, And guide her future children Heavenward.” And here is one, on the same theme, which many a brother poet would do well to emulate. How fitly this sonnet might have been read to Gray! “Poet! who sittest in thy pleasant room, Warming thy heart with idle thoughts of love, And of a holy life that leads above, Striving to keep life’s spring-flowers still in bloom, And lingering to snuff their fresh perfume,— O, there were other duties meant for thee, Than to sit down in peacefulness and be! O, there are brother hearts that dwell in gloom, Souls loathsome, foul, and black with daily sin, So crusted o’er with baseness, that no ray Of Heaven’s blessed light may enter in! Come down, then, to this hot and dusty way, And lead them back to hope and peace again,— For, save in Act, thy Love is all in vain.” Here is the sentiment of our mission finely expressed—