Poor Oscar Wilde had many fine qualities, but his egotism, his vicious taint, and, perhaps, his unfortunate surroundings, drove him to shipwreck, with all his golden talents aboard. Every day noble ships run upon the rocks; every day brave pennons go down in the press of the battle, and are trampled in the blood and dust; every day lackeys ride in triumph, and princes slave on the galleys; every day the sweet buds go to the swine-trough, and the gay and fair young children to shame or the jail. Some fall through loving too much, others through loving not at all. Some are shattered by a single fault, like a ruby cup with one flaw in its radiant heart. Some are twisted out of all hope from birth, like one of Omar's pots, which the potter moulded awry. Some seeds of innocent lilies, or roses of loveliness, or passion flowers divine, are scattered upon the rocks, or blown by harsh winds out to sea. Do you know Thomas Carlyle's burning words concerning these tragic fates? Cholera doctors, hired to dive into black dens of infection and despair, they, rushing about all day, from lane to lane, with their life in their hand, are found to do their function; which is a much more rugged one than Howard's. O, what say we, Cholera Doctors? Ragged losels, gathered by beat of drum from the over-crowded streets of cities, and drilled a little, and dressed in red, do not they stand fire in an uncensurable manner; and handsomely give their life, if needful, at the rate of a shilling per day? Human virtue, if we went down to the roots of it, is not so rare. The materials of human virtue are everywhere abundant as the light of the sun: raw materials--O woe, and loss, and scandal thrice and three-fold, that they so seldom are elaborated, and built into a result. That they lie yet unelaborated and stagnant in the souls of widespread dreary millions, fermenting, festering; and issue at last as energetic vice instead of strong practical virtue! A Mrs. Manning "dying game"--alas, is not that the foiled potentiality of a kind of heroine too? Not a heroic Judith, not a mother of Gracchi now, but a hideous murderess, fit to be mother of hyenas! To such extent can potentialities be foiled. Let us bear in mind, then, that a man's powers, like the powers of a state, will work for good or for evil, as they are ill or well governed. And the government of human powers and desires depends partly upon heredity, and largely upon environment, of which in its due place. How Does Heredity Make Genius? I shall not weary the reader with proofs of heredity. It would be a waste of words to quote pages of Darwin, Spencer, Weissmann, and Galton for the sake of proving the obvious. Our own observation and common sense will convince us that our traits and qualities of body and mind are inherited.