hundred and twenty-five thousand per month; or
thirty-six thousand, nine hundred and eighty-six per day, or one
thousand five hundred and forty-one per hour, or six and twenty dollars
for every minute that flew. Thus the usual track of supposition was
thoroughly broken up. Men knew not what to imagine. There were some who
even conceived that Mr. Ellison would divest himself forthwith of at
least two-thirds of his fortune as of utterly superfluous opulence;
enriching whole troops of his relatives by division of his
superabundance.

I was not surprised, however, to perceive that he had long made up his
mind upon a topic which had occasioned so much of discussion to his
friends. Nor was I greatly astonished at the nature of his decision. In
the widest and noblest sense, he was a poet. He comprehended, moreover,
the true character, the august aims, the supreme majesty and dignity
of the poetic sentiment. The proper gratification of the sentiment he
instinctively felt to lie in the creation of novel forms of Beauty. Some
peculiarities, either in his early education, or in the nature of his
intellect, had tinged with what is termed materialism the whole cast
of his ethical speculations; and it was this bias, perhaps, which
imperceptibly led him to perceive that the most advantageous, if not the
sole legitimate field for the exercise of the poetic sentiment, was to
be found in the creation of novel moods of purely physical loveliness.
Thus it happened that he became neither musician nor poet; if we use
this latter term in its every--day acceptation. Or it might have been
that he became neither the one nor the other, in pursuance of an idea
of his which I have already mentioned--the idea, that in the contempt of
ambition lay one of the essential principles of happiness on earth.
Is it not, indeed, possible that while a high order of genius is
necessarily ambitious, the highest is invariably above that which is
termed ambition? And may it not thus happen that many far greater than
Milton, have contentedly remained "mute and inglorious?" I believe
the world has never yet seen, and that, unless through some series of
accidents goading the noblest order of mind into distasteful exertion,
the world will never behold, that full extent of triumphant execution,
in the richer productions of Art, of which the human nature is
absolutely capable.

Mr. Ellison became neither musician nor poet; although no man lived
more profoundly enamor