solid qualities
he possesses, unsuspected before. A man devoid of brilliancy may on
occasion show that he possesses great good sense, or that he has the
power of sticking to his task in spite of discouragement. Let a man be
placed where dogged perseverance will stand him in stead, and you may
see what he can do when he has but a chance. The especial weight which
has held some men back, the thing which kept them from doing great
things and attaining great fame, has been just this: that they were not
able to say or to write what they have thought and felt. And, indeed,
a great poet is nothing more than the one man in a million who has the
gift to express that which has been in the mind and heart of multitudes.
If even the most commonplace of human beings could write all the poetry
he has felt, he would produce something that would go straight to the
hearts of many.

It is touching to witness the indications and vestiges of sweet and
admirable things which have been subjected to a weight which has
entirely crushed them down,--things which would have come out into
beauty and excellence, if they had been allowed a chance. You may
witness one of the saddest of all the losses of Nature in various old
maids. What kind hearts are there running to waste! What pure and gentle
affections blossom to be blighted! I dare say you have heard a young
lady of more than forty sing, and you have seen her eyes fill with tears
at the pathos of a very commonplace verse. Have you not thought that
there was the indication of a tender heart which might have made some
good man happy, and, in doing so, made herself happy, too? But it was
not to be. Still, it is sad to think that sometimes upon cats and dogs
there should be wasted the affection of a kindly human being! And you
know, too, how often the fairest promise of human excellence is never
suffered to come to fruit. You must look upon gravestones to find the
names of those who promised to be the best and noblest specimens of
the race. They died in early youth,--perhaps in early childhood. Their
pleasant faces, their singular words and ways, remain, not often talked
of, in the memories of subdued parents, or of brothers and sisters now
grown old, but never forgetting how _that_ one of the family, that
was as the flower of the flock, was the first to fade. It has been a
proverbial saying, you know, even from heathen ages, that those whom the
gods love die young. It is but an inferior order of hu