The volume is so laden with striking thoughts and observations, that it is difficult to fix upon any deserving especial quotation. As a specimen of the writer’s manner, the following on Genius and Talent may serve:
“Talent is strength and subtlety of mind, genius is mental inspiration and delicacy of feeling. Talent possesses vigor and acuteness of penetration, but is surpassed by the vivid intellectual conceptions of genius. The former is skillful and bold, the latter aspiring and gentle; but talent excels in practical sagacity, and hence those striking contrasts so often witnessed in the world, the triumph of talent through its adroit and active energies, and the adversities of genius in the midst of its boundless but unattainable aspirations.
“Talent is the Lion and the Serpent; Genius is the Eagle and the Dove.
“Or the first is like some conspicuous flower which flaunts its glory in the sunshine, while the last resembles the odoriferous spikenard’s root, whose sweetness is concealed in the ground.
“The flower displays itself openly, the root must be extracted from the earth.”
Here is a piece of verse, in a different vein, on a very common dispensation of Providence, the Mean Fellow. We fear that few are so fortunate as not to be able to apply it to some acquaintance or enemy:
“Born but to be some snarl or plague,
Vile product of a rotten egg,
In every feature of thy face,
A want of heart, of soul, we trace;