to enervate the
character, give false ideas of life, impart the semblance of drudgery to
the noble toils and duties of the active man. All poetry would not do
this--not, for instance, the Classical, in its diviner masters--not the
poetry of Homer, of Virgil, of Sophocles, not, perhaps, even that of the
indolent Horace. But the poetry which youth usually loves and
appreciates the best--the poetry of mere sentiment--does so in minds
already over predisposed to the sentimental, and which require bracing
to grow into healthful manhood.

On the other hand, even this latter kind of poetry, which is peculiarly
modern, does suit many minds of another mould--minds which our modern
life, with its hard positive forms, tends to produce. And as in certain
climates plants and herbs, peculiarly adapted as antidotes to those
diseases most prevalent in the atmosphere, are profusely sown, as it
were, by the benignant providence of nature--so it may be that the
softer and more romantic species of poetry, which comes forth in harsh,
money-making, unromantic times, is intended as curatives and
counter-poisons. The world is so much with us, now-a-days, that we need
have something that prates to us, albeit even in too fine an euphuism,
of the moon and stars.

Certes, to Leonard Fairfield, at that period of his intellectual life,
the softness of our Helicon descended as healing dews. In his turbulent
and unsettled ambition, in his vague grapple with the giant forms of
political truths, in his bias towards the application of science to
immediate practical purposes, this lovely vision of the Muse came in the
white robe of the Peacemaker; and with upraised hand, pointing to serene
skies, she opened to him fair glimpses of the Beautiful, which is given
to Peasant as to Prince--showed to him that on the surface of earth
there is something nobler than fortune--that he who can view the world
as a poet is always at soul a king; while to practical purpose itself,
that larger and more profound invention, which poetry stimulates,
supplied the grand design and the subtle view--leading him beyond the
mere ingenuity of the mechanic, and habituating him to regard the inert
force of the matter at his command with the ambition of the Discoverer.
But, above all, the discontent that was within him, finding a vent, not
in deliberate war upon this actual world, but through the purifying
channels of song--in the vent itself it evaporated, it was lost. By
accusto