ks,
which to every artist is a supreme pleasure. Youth has an excess of
sensibility, to which every object glitters and attracts. We leave one
pursuit for another, and the young man's year is a heap of beginnings. At
the end of a twelvemonth, he has nothing to show for it, not one completed
work. But the time is not lost. Our instincts drove us to hive innumerable
experiences, that are yet of no visible value, and which we may keep for
twice seven years before they shall be wanted. The best things are of
secular growth. The instinct of classifying marks the wise and healthy
mind. Linnaeus projects his system, and lays out his twenty-four classes of
plants, before yet he has found in Nature a single plant to justify
certain of his classes. His seventh class has not one. In process of time,
he finds with delight the little white _Trientalis_, the only plant with
seven petals and sometimes seven stamens, which constitutes a seventh
class in conformity with his system. The conchologist builds his cabinet
whilst as yet he has few shells. He labels shelves for classes, cells for
species: all but a few are empty. But every year fills some blanks, and
with accelerating speed as he becomes knowing and known. An old scholar
finds keen delight in verifying all the impressive anecdotes and citations
he has met with in miscellaneous reading and hearing, in all the years of
youth. We carry in memory important anecdotes, and have lost all clue to
the author from whom we had them. We have a heroic speech from Rome or
Greece, but cannot fix it on the man who said it. We have an admirable
line worthy of Horace, ever and anon resounding in our mind's ear, but
have searched all probable and improbable books for it in vain. We consult
the reading men: but, strangely enough, they who know everything know not
this. But especially we have a certain insulated thought, which haunts us,
but remains insulated and barren. Well, there is nothing for all this but
patience and time. Time, yes, that is the finder, the unweariable
explorer, not subject to casualties, omniscient at last. The day comes
when the hidden author of our story is found; when the brave speech
returns straight to the hero who said it; when the admirable verse finds
the poet to whom it belongs; and best of all, when the lonely thought,
which seemed so wise, yet half-wise, half-thought, because it cast no
light abroad, is suddenly matched in our mind by its twin, by its
sequence, or