ace. It is with our intellectual as with
our material wealth; we do not realize how precious some fragments of it
might be to our poorer neighbors. The old clothes that we wear no
longer may give comfort and confidence to a man in naked destitution;
the truths which are so familiar to us that we never think about them,
may raise the utterly ignorant to a sense of their human brotherhood.

Above all, in the exercise of our intellectual charities, let us
accustom ourselves to feel satisfied with humble results and small
successes; and here let me make a confession which may be of some
possible use to others. When a young man, I taught a drawing-class
gratuitously, beginning with thirty-six pupils, who dwindled gradually
to eleven. Soon afterwards I gave up the work from dissatisfaction, on
account of the meagre attendance. This was very wrong--the eleven were
worth the thirty-six; and so long as one of the eleven remained I ought
to have contentedly taught him. The success of a teacher is not to be
measured by the numbers whom he immediately influences. It is enough, it
has been proved to be enough in more than one remarkable instance, that
a single living soul should be in unison with the soul of a master, and
receive his thought by sympathy. The one disciple teaches in his turn,
and the idea is propagated.

LETTER IV.

TO THE FRIEND OF A MAN OF HIGH CULTURE WHO PRODUCED NOTHING.

Joubert--"Not yet time," or else "The time is past"--His weakness for
production--Three classes of minds--A more perfect intellectual life
attainable by the silent student than by authors--He may follow his
own genius--Saving of time effected by abstinence from writing--The
unproductive may be more influential than the prolific.

When I met B. at your house last week, you whispered to me in the
drawing-room that he was a man of the most remarkable attainments, who,
to the great regret of all his friends, had never employed his abilities
to any visible purpose. We had not time for a conversation on this
subject, because B. himself immediately joined us. His talk reminded me
very much of Joubert--not that I ever knew Joubert personally, though I
have lived very near to Villeneuve-sur-Yonne, where Joubert lived; but
he is one of those characters whom it is possible to know without having
seen them in the flesh. His friends used to urge him to write something,
and then he said, "_Pas encore._" "Not yet; I need a long peace."
Tranqu