the painful erasures and interpolations--in a
word, at the wheels and pinions, the tackle for scene-shifting--the
step-ladders and demon-traps--the cock's feathers, the red paint and
the black patches, which, in ninety-nine cases out of the hundred,
constituted the properties of the literary _histrio_.

I am aware, on the other hand, that the case is by no means common in
which an author is at all in condition to retrace the steps by which his
conclusions have been attained. In general, suggestions having arisen
pell-mell, are pursued and forgotten in a similar manner.

* * * * *

=_Henry T. Tuckerman, 1813-._=

From "New England Philosophy," an Essay from "The Optimist."

=_223._= THE HEART SUPERIOR TO THE INTELLECT.

Constant supplies of knowledge to the intellect, and the exclusive
cultivation of reason, may, indeed, make a pedant and a logician; but
the probability is, these benefits--if such they are--will be gained at
the expense of the soul. Sentiment, in its broadest acceptation, is as
essential to the true enjoyment and grace of life as mind. Technical
information, and that quickness of apprehension which New Englanders
call smartness, are not so valuable to a human being as sensibility to
the beautiful, and a spontaneous appreciation of the divine influences
which fill the realms of vision and of sound, and the world of action
and, feeling. The tastes, affections, and sentiments are more absolutely
the man than his talents or acquirements. And yet it is by, and through,
the latter that we are apt to estimate character, of which they are
at best but fragmentary evidences. It is remarkable that in the New
Testament, allusions to the intellect are so rare, while the "heart" and
the "spirit we are of" are ever appealed to....

To what end are society, popular education, churches, and all the
machinery of culture, if no living truth is elicited which fertilizes,
as well as enlightens. Shakespeare undoubtedly owed his marvelous
insight into the human soul, to his profound sympathy with man. He might
have conned whole libraries on the philosophy of the passions, he might
have coldly observed facts for years, and never have conceived of
jealousy like Othello's,--the remorse of Macbeth, or love like that of
Juliet....

Sometimes, in musing upon genius in its simpler manifestations, it seems
as if the great art of human culture consisted chiefly in preserving the
glow and freshn