To converse well, we need the cool tact of talent--to talk well, the glowing _abandon_ of genius. Men of _very_ high genius, however, talk at one time _very_ well, at another _very_ ill:--well, when they have full time, full scope, and a sympathetic listener:--ill, when they fear interruption and are annoyed by the impossibility of exhausting the topic during that particular talk. The partial genius is flashy--scrappy. The true genius shudders at incompleteness--imperfection--and usually prefers silence to saying the something which is not every thing that should be said. He is so filled with his theme that he is dumb, first from not knowing how to begin, where there seems eternally beginning behind beginning, and secondly from perceiving his true end at so infinite a distance. Sometimes, dashing into a subject, he blunders, hesitates, stops short, sticks fast, and, because he has been overwhelmed by the rush and multiplicity of his thoughts, his hearers sneer at his inability to think. Such a man finds his proper element in those "great occasions" which confound and prostrate the general intellect. Nevertheless, by his conversation, the influence of the conversationist upon mankind in general, is more decided than that of the talker by his talk:--the latter invariably talks to best purpose with his pen. And good conversationists are more rare than respectable talkers. I know many of the latter; and of the former only five or six:--among whom I can call to mind, just now, Mr. Willis, Mr. J. T. S. S.--of Philadelphia, Mr. W. M. R.--of Petersburg, Va., and Mrs. S----d, formerly of New York. Most people, in conversing, force us to curse our stars that our lot was not cast among the African nation mentioned by Eudoxus--the savages who, having no mouths, never opened them, as a matter of course. And yet, if denied mouth, some persons whom I have in my eye would contrive to chatter on still--as they do now--through the nose. * * * * * All in a hot and copper sky The bloody sun at noon Just up above the mast did stand, No bigger than the moon.--COLERIDGE. Is it possible that the poet did not know the apparent diameter of the moon to be greater than that of the sun? If any ambitious man have a fancy to revolutionize, at one effort, the universal world of human thought, human opinion, and human sentiment, the opportunity is his own--the road to immortal renown lies straight, open, and unencumbered before him. All that he has to do is to write and publish a very little book. Its title should be simple--a few plain words--"My Heart Laid Bare." But--this little book must be _true to its title_.