ven of fame. For persons who degrade it to such purposes, the deepest
contempt of which his kindly nature could admit was at all times in
store. 'Unhappy mortal!' says he to the literary tradesman, the man
who writes for gain, 'Unhappy mortal, who with science and art, the
noblest of all instruments, effectest and attemptest nothing more than
the day-drudge with the meanest; who, in the domain of perfect
Freedom, bearest about in thee the spirit of Slave!' As Schiller
viewed it, genuine Literature includes the essence of philosophy,
religion, art; whatever speaks to the immortal part of man. The
daughter, she is likewise the nurse of all that is spiritual and
exalted in our character. The boon she bestows is truth; truth not
merely physical, political, economical, such as the sensual man in us
is perpetually demanding, ever ready to reward, and likely in general
to find; but truth of moral feeling, truth of taste, that inward truth
in its thousand modifications, which only the most ethereal portion of
our nature can discern, but without which that portion of it
languishes and dies, and we are left divested of our birthright,
thenceforward 'of the earth earthy,' machines for earning and
enjoying, no longer worthy to be called the Sons of Heaven. The
treasures of Literature are thus celestial, imperishable, beyond all
price: with her is the shrine of our best hopes, the palladium of pure
manhood; to be among the guardians and servants of this is the noblest
function that can be intrusted to a mortal. Genius, even in its
faintest scintillations, is 'the inspired gift of God;' a solemn
mandate to its owner to go forth and labour in his sphere, to keep
alive 'the sacred fire' among his brethren, which the heavy and
polluted atmosphere of this world is forever threatening to
extinguish. Woe to him if he neglect this mandate, if he hear not its
small still voice! Woe to him if he turn this inspired gift into the
servant of his evil or ignoble passions; if he offer it on the altar
of vanity, if he sell it for a piece of money!

'The Artist, it is true,' says Schiller, 'is the son of his age; but
pity for him if he is its pupil, or even its favourite! Let some
beneficent Divinity snatch him when a suckling from the breast of his
mother, and nurse him with the milk of a better time; that he may
ripen to his full stature beneath a distant Grecian sky. And having
grown to manhood, let him return, a foreign shape, into his century;