says
Amiel.

Talent may judge, Genius creates. Talent keeps the rules, Genius knows
when to break them.

"You may know Genius," says the ironical Swift, "by this sign: All the
dunces are against him."

There is fine talent in Everett's oration at Gettysburg, but what a
different quality spoke in Lincoln's brief but immortal utterance on
the same occasion! Is anything more than bright, alert talent shown in
the mass of Lowell's work, save perhaps in his "Biglow Papers"? If he
had a genius for poetry, though he wrote much, I cannot see it. His
tone, as Emerson said, is always that of prose. The "Cathedral" is a
_tour de force_. The line of his so often quoted--"What is so rare as
a day in June?"--is a line of prose.

The lines "To a Honey Bee" by John Russell McCarthy are the true gold
of poetry. "To make of labor an eternal lust" could never have been
struck off by mere talent.

INVENTION AND DISCOVERY

Columbus discovered America; Edison invented the phonograph, the
incandescent light, and many other things. If Columbus had not
discovered America, some other voyager would have. If Harvey had not
discovered the circulation of the blood, some one else would have. The
wonder is that it was not discovered ages before. So far as I know, no
one has yet discovered the function of the spleen, but doubtless in
time some one will. It is only comparatively recently that the
functions of other ductless glands have been discovered. What did we
know about the thyroid gland a half-century ago? All the new
discoveries in the heavens waited upon the new astronomic methods, and
the end is not yet. Many things in nature are still like an unexplored
land. New remedies for the ills of the human body doubtless remain to
be found. In the mechanical world probably no new principle remains to
be discovered. "Keely" frauds have had their day. In the chemical
world, the list of primary elements will probably not be added to,
though new combinations of these elements may be almost endless. In
the biological world, new species of insects, birds, and mammals
doubtless remain to be discovered. Our knowledge of the natural
history of the globe is far from being complete.

But in regard to inventions the case is different. I find myself
speculating on such a question as this: If Edison had never been born,
should we ever have had the phonograph, or the incandescent light? If
Graham Bell had died in infancy, should we ever have had the
teleph