passes an apprenticeship with some Richard Avenel, and does not yet detect what good and what grandeur, what addition even to the true poetry of the social universe, fractional existences like Richard Avenel's bestow; for the pillars that support society are like those of the court of the Hebrew Tabernacle--they are of brass, it is true, but they are filleted with silver. From such intermediate state genius is expelled, and driven on in its way, and would have been so in this case, had Mrs. Fairfield (who is but the representative of the homely natural affections, strongest ever in true genius--for light is warm) never crushed Mr. Avenel's moss rose on her sisterly bosom. Now, forth from this passage and defile of transition into the larger world, must genius go on, working out its natural destiny amidst things and forms the most artificial. Passions that move and influence the world are at work around it. Often lost sight of itself, its very absence is a silent contrast to the agencies present. Merged and vanished for a while amidst the practical world, yet we ourselves feel all the while that it is _there_--is at work amidst the workings around it. This practical world that effaces it rose out of some genius that has gone before; and so each man of genius, though we never come across him, as his operations proceed, in places remote from our thoroughfares, is yet influencing the practical world that ignores him, for ever and ever. That is GENIUS! We can't describe it in books--we can only hint and suggest it, by the accessaries which we artfully heap about it. The entrance of a true probationer into the terrible ordeal of practical life is like that into the miraculous cavern, by which, legend informs us, St. Patrick converted Ireland." _Blanche._--"What is that legend? I never heard of it."