slept in ale-houses and wrote in bar-rooms, who took up the pen as a magician's' wand to supply their wants, and when the pressure of necessity was relieved, resorted again to their carousals. 2. Your real genius is an idle, irregular, vagabond sort of personage, who muses in the fields or dreams by the fireside; whose strong impulses-that is the cant of it-must needs hurry him into wild irregularities or foolish eccentricity; who abhors order, and can bear no restraint, and eschews all labor: such a one, for instance, as Newton or Milton! What! they must have been irregular, else they were no geniuses! 3. "The young man," it is often said, "has genius enough, if he would only study." Now the truth is, as I shall take the liberty to state it, that genius will study, it is that in the mind which does study; that is the very nature of it. I care not to say that it will always use books. All study is not reading, any more than all reading is study. Study, says Cicero,' is the voluntary and vigorous application of the mind to any subject. 4. Such study, such intense mental action, and nothing else, is genius. And so far as there is any native predisposition about this enviable character of mind, it is a predisposition to that action. That is the only test of the original bias; and he who does not come to that point, though he may have shrewdness, and readiness, and parts, never had a genius. 5. No need to waste regrets upon him, as that he never could be induced to give his attention or study to any thing; he never had that which he is supposed to have lost. For attention it is though other qualities belong to this transcendent 'Magician (ma jish' an), one who is skilled in the art and science of putting into action the power of spirits or the secret operation of natu'ral causes.- SIR ISAAC NEWTON, the greatest of philosophers and mathematicians, was born in Lincolnshire, England, December 25, 1642. His investigations have completely revolutionized modern science. His three great discoveries, of fluxions, the nature of light and colors, and the laws of gravitation, have given him a name which will last as long as civilization exists. His "Principia" unfolds the theory of the uniHe died in 1727.- MILTON, See Index of Authors.--' CICERO, see p. 143, note 4.- Nothing (nůth' ing).— Trans cend' ent, surpass ing; very excellent. verse. power-attention t is, that is the věry soul of genius: not the fixed eye, not the poring over a book, but the fixed thought. It is, in fact, an action of the mind which is steadily concentrated upon one idea or one series of ideas,-which collects in one point the rays of the soul till they search, penetrate, and fire the whole train of its thoughts. 6. And while the fire burns within, the outward man may indeed be cold, indifferent, and negligent,-absent in appear ance; he may be an idler, or a wanderer, apparently without aim or intent; but still the fire burns within. And what though "it bursts forth" at length, as has been said, "like volcanic fires, with spontaneous, original, native force?" It only shows the intenser action of the elements beneath. What though it breaks like lightning from the cloud? The electric fire had been collecting in the firmament through many a silent, calm, and clear day. 7. What though the might of genius appears in one decisive blow, struck in some moment of high debate, or at the crisis of a nation's peril? That mighty energy, though it may have heaved in the breast of a Demosthenes,' was once a feeble infant's thought. A mother's eye watched over its dawning. A father's care guarded its early growth. It soon trod with youthful steps the halls of learning, and found other fathers to wake and to watch for it,-even as it finds them here. 8. It went on; but silence was upon its path, and the deep strugglings of the inward soul marked its progress, and the cherishing powers of nature silently ministered to it. The ele ments around breathed upon it and "touched it to finer issues." The golden ray of heaven fell upon it, and ripened its expanding faculties. The slow revolutions of years slowly added to its collected treasures and energies; till in its hour of glory, it stood forth embodied in the form of living, commanding, irresistible eloquence! 9. The world wonders at the manifestation, and says, "Strange, strange, that it should come thus unsought, unpremeditated, un 'DEMOSTHENES, the greatest of Greek orators, was born at Athens, B. C. 982, and died B. C. about 322. His orations present to us the models which approach the nearest to perfection of all human productions. prepared!" But the truth is, there is no more a miracle in it, than there is in the towering of the preeminent forest-tree, or in the flowing of the mighty and irresistible river, or in the wealth and the waving of the boundless harvest. ORVILLE DEwey. ORVILLE DEWEY, D. D., was born in Sheffield, Berkshire county, Massachusetts, March 28th, 1794. His father was a farmer, occupying a highly respecta ble position as a citizen. He entered Williams College, in his native county, at the age of seventeen, where he gained a high position. He was thorough in all his studies. Rhetoric he cultivated with uncommon perseverance. He was critical and severe upon his own literary productions, revising and pruning with a fidelity which gained him preeminence in his class, as already attaining a style of classic strength and purity. He was graduated in 1814, with the highest honors of the institution, having received the appointment of Valedictorian. He pursued his professional studies at Andover Theological Seminary. In 1823 he received and accepted a call to become pastor of a Unitarian church in New Bedford, where he remained ten years. During this period he lectured frequently, and wrote for the press. He first visited Europe for the improvement of his health in June, 1833, where he spent a year. After his return, he published some results of his travels in a volume entitled, "The Old World and the New." This book contains some of the best criticisms on painting, on music, en sculpture, on men, things, and places; and more than all, views of society, of government, of the tendency of monarchical institutions, and of the condition of the European people, which are sound, comprehensive, and deeply interesting. On his return from Europe he was settled over "The Second Congregational Unitarian Society" of New York. In 1842 he again went abroad for his health, taking his family with him. He passed two years in France, Italy, Switzerland, and England. In 1848, his health again failing, he dissolved his connection with his church. Since that time he has occasionally preached and lectured in nearly all the large cities of the Union. All, except his late writings, are bound in one volume, published at London in 1844. His productions since that period are published in New York, in three volumes. Dr. Dewey has great depth of thought. His imagination is rich, but not superfluous; ready, but not obtrusive. His style is artistic and scholarly. His periods are perfectly complete and rounded, yet filled by the thought; the variety is great, yet a symmetry prevails; and in general we find that harmony between the thoughts and their form which should always obtain. 1. 44. THE POWER OF ART. THEN, from the sacred garden driven, WHEN, Man fled before his Maker's wrath, An angel left her place in heaven, And cross'd the wanderer's sunless path. "Twas Art! sweet Art!-new radiance broke Where her light foot flew o'er the ground; And thus with scraph voice she spoke,- 2. She led him through the trackless wild, And nature gladden'd as she gazed. And point their spires of faith to heaven. 3. He rends the oak, and bids it ride, To guard the shores its beauty graced; And leaps triumphant o'er the grave. 4. He plucks the pearls that stud the deep, He breaks the stubborn marble's sleep, 5. In fields of air he writes his name, And treads the chambers of the sky; He moves in greatness and in grace; Links realm to realm, and race to race. SPRAGUE. CHARLES SPRAGUE was born in Boston, on the 26th day of October, 1791. He was educated in the schools of his native city, which he left at an early period to acquire a practical knowledge of trade. At twenty-one years of age, he com menced the business of merchant on his own account, and continued in it unti 1820, when he was elected cashier of the Globe Bank. He is still connected with that institution. In this period he has found leisure to study the works of the greatest authors, particularly those of the masters of English poetry, and to write the admirable poems on which is based his own reputation. Mr. SPRAGUE's first productions that attracted much attention, were a series of brilliant prologues, the first of which, a written for the Park Theater, in New York, in 1821. "Shakspeare Ode," delivered in Boston Theater, in 1823, at the exhibition of a pageant in honor of SHAKSPEARE, is one of the most vigorous and exquisite lyrics in the English language. "Curiosity," the longest and best of his poems, was delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge, in August, 1829. Several of his short poems evince great skill in the use of language, and show him to be a master of the poetic art. 45. WANTS. and of EVERYBODY, VERYBODY, young and old, children and gray-beards, has heard of the renowned Haroun Al Raschid,' the hero of Eastern history and Eastern romance, and the most illustrious of the caliphs of Bagdad,' that famous city on which the light of learning and science shone, long ere it dawned on the benighted. regions of Europe, which has since succeeded to the diadem that once glittered on the brow of Asia. Though as the successor of the Prophet he exercised a despotic sway over the lives and fortunes of his subjects, yet did he not, like the Eastern despots of more modern times, shut himself up within the walls of his palace, hearing nothing but the adulation of his dependents; seeing nothing but the shadows which surrounded him; and knowing nothing but what he received through the medium of in'terested deception or malignant falsehood. 2. That he might see with his own eyes and hear with his own ears, he was accustomed to go about through the streets of 'HAROUN AL RASCHID, a celebrated caliph of the Saracens, ascended the throne in 786, and was a contemporary of Charlemagne. He was brave, munificent, and fond of letters, but cruel and perfidious.-- Cả’liph, a successor or representative of Mohammed; one vested with supreme dignity and power in all matters relating to religion and civil policy. This title is borne by the grand seignior in Turkey, and by the sophi of Persia.—' Båg dåd', a large and celebrated city of Asiatic Turkey, formerly capital of the empire of the caliphs, now capital of the pashalic of the same name, on both banks of the Tigris, about 190 miles above its junction with the Euphrates.-' Asia (à' she a). |