A fit of disgust is a great stimulator of thought. Pleasure represses it.
EARNESTNESS.
M. de Buffon says that "genius is only great patience." Would it not be truer to say that genius is great earnestness? Patience is only one faculty; earnestness is the devotion of all the faculties: it is the cause of patience; it gives endurance, overcomes pain, strengthens weakness, braves dangers, sustains hope, makes light of difficulties, and lessens the sense of weariness in overcoming them. Yes, War yields its victories, and Beauty her favors, to him who fights or wooes with the most passionate ardor,—in other words, with the greatest earnestness. Even the simulation of earnestness accomplishes much,—such a charm has it for us. This explains the success of libertines, the coarseness of whose natures is usually only disguised by a certain conventional polish of manners: "their hearts seem in earnest, because their passions are."
EDUCATION OF THE SEXES.
Girls are early taught deceit, and they never forget the lesson. Boys are more outspoken. This is because boys are instructed that to be frank and open is to be manly and generous, while their sisters are perpetually admonished that "this is not pretty," or "that is not becoming," until they have learned to control their natural impulses, and to regulate their conduct by precepts and example. The result of all this is, that, while men retain much of their natural dispositions, women have largely made-up characters.
EMERSON'S ESSAYS.
I have not yet been able to decide whether it is better to read certain of Emerson's essays as poetry or philosophy. Perhaps, though, it would be no more than just to consider them as an almost complete and perfect union of the two. Certainly, no modern writer has more of vivid individuality, both of thought and expression,—and few writers, of any age, will better bear reperusal, or surpass him in the grand merit of suggestiveness. There is much in his books that I cannot clearly understand, and passages sometimes occur that once seemed to me destitute of meaning; but I have since learned, from a greater familiarity with what he has written, to respect even his obscurities, and to have faith that there is at all times behind his words both a man and a meaning.
ENGLISHMEN.
There is in the character of perhaps a majority of Englishmen a singular commingling of the haughty and the subservient,—the result, doubtless, of the mixed nature, partly aristocratic and partly democratic, of the government, and of the peculiar structure of English society, in which every man indemnifies himself for the subserviency he is required to exhibit to the classes above, by exacting a similar subserviency from those below him. Thackeray, who is to be considered a competent judge of the character of his countrymen, puts the remark into the mouth of one of his characters, that, "if you wish to make an Englishman respect you, you must treat him with insolence." The language is somewhat too strong, and it would not be altogether safe to act upon the suggestion; but the witticism embodies a modicum of truth, for all that.