around the walls of my workshop, waiting to be
chiselled. They won't be Apollos,--but even Puck is a Robin Goodfellow,
since,

"In one night, ere glimpse of morn,
His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn
That ten day-laborers could not end."

And I shall not confine myself to my sphere. I hate my sphere. I like
everything that is outside of it,--or, better still, my sphere rounds
out infinitely into space. _Nihil humani a me alienum puto._ I was born
into the whole world. I am monarch of all I survey. Wherever I see
symptoms of a pie, thither shall my fingers travel. Wherever a windmill
flaps, it shall go hard but I will have a tilt at it. I shall not wait
till I know what I am talking about. If I did, I never should talk at
all. It is a well-known principle in educational science, that the
surest way to learn anything is to teach it. How fast would Geology get
on, if its professors talked only of what they knew? Planting their feet
firmly on facts, they feel about in all directions for theories. By
carefully noting, publishing, comparing, discussing their uncertainties,
they presently arrive at a certainty. Horace might advocate nine years'
delay. He was building for himself a monument that should defy the
rolling years. He was setting to work in cool blood to compass
immortality, and a little time, more or less, made no difference. Apollo
and Bacchus could afford to wait. Beautiful daughters of beautiful
mothers will exist to the world's end, and their praises will always be
in order. But when, unmindful of the next generation, which will have
its books and its memories, though you are unread and forgotten, mindful
only of this generation which groans and travails in pain, you look on
suffering that you yearn to assuage, danger of which you long to warn,
sadness which you would fain dispel, burdens which you would strive,
though ever so little, to lighten, delay, even for things so desirable
as complete knowledge and perfect polish, becomes not only absurd, but
impossible. Better shoot into the cavern, even if you don't know in what
precise part of it the dragon lies coiled. The flash of your powder may
reveal his whereabouts to a surer marksman. A transient immortality is
of no importance; it is of importance that hearts be purified, homes
made happy, paths cleared, clouds dispelled. Is that ignoble? Very well.
But the noblest way to benefit posterity is to serve the present
age,--to serve it by doing o