works were performed under discountenance and blindness; but difficulties vanished at his touch. He was born for whatever is arduous; and his work is not the greatest of heroic poems only because it is not the first."

A Plea for

WHY is it that pedants are generally so ridiPedants. culed? Is it not lucky for a man that he can contract an intense, even an extravagant, fondness of some pursuit, some specific study, art, or science, - which he will consequently understand better than other men, and in solving whose problems he may become an expert? What is a man good for without professional enthusiasm, who does not give his whole soul to his calling, concentrating upon it all his energies, and loving it with an ardor that almost ignores the existence of any other? "No man," says Emerson, "can do anything well, who does not think that what he does is the centre of the visible universe." It is easy to declaim against "one-ideaism," "intellectual narrowness," and "a' that;" but, in spite of the cheap eloquence and fashionable cant of superficially-omniscient men who plume themselves upon their fancied oceanic breadth and depth, we love to see a man magnify his calling, even if he does overrate its relative importance. It is only thus that he can achieve excellence or eminence.

Who are the men that make their mark on the world, and to what do they owe their celebrity and influence? Are they the men who have the most versatility and the most varied culture? No; they are those whose minds want balance, who have some giant faculty developed at the expense of the rest. The very deadness of perception thus induced promotes self-confidence and positiveness. Occasionally, at long intervals in the history of humanity,

a person appears who wings his flight to the peaks of greatness by an equal flapping of his wings; but all the rest gain their motion like a mill-wheel, by a continued fall of water on one side. The want of balance, it has been truly said, is the cause of most motion; and therefore the minds that stir the stagnant pool of common thought are out of equilibrium, and propelled by this very cause, like a pith figure loaded with a leaden foot, to spring with impatient yet effective force in some providentiallyprescribed direction. Once in four or five centuries the world beholds a Leonardo da Vinci or a Leibnitz; but few of their fellow-mortals can fully master more than one art or science, all beyond is a miserable affectation and a downright waste of time. What Michael Angelo said of painting is true of every other art or craft: "It is jealous, and requires the whole man."

The day of universal scholars is past. The measure of a man's learning to-day is the amount of his voluntary ignorance; the measure of his practical force is the amount he is content to leave unattempted. We cannot, therefore, admire the man who, instead of being devoted to one great art, "married to that immortal bride,"

woos all the

muses in turn; not content to be a painter, sculptor, or writer, unless he is also "chemist, statesman, fiddler, and buffoon." There is no end of acquisition, if one begins to dabble in all the ologies and isms which may be intrinsically valuable, or which, if possessed, may add a feather to his reputation. Give us a thousand times, rather, the glorious pedantry of Fielding's Parson Adams, who thought a schoolmaster the greatest character in the world, and himself the greatest schoolmaster in it! We smile when we are told of the French grammarian Daguesseau,

who, when told that a revolution had broken out in Paris, replied, "Never mind! I have in my portfolio thirty-six conjugations, all completed;" and, again, when we hear of Dr. George, who shrewdly suspected that Frederick the Great, with all his victories, could not conjugate a Greek verb in mi. But this very exclusiveness - this absorption in one pursuit is the secret of all power. Was Vestris, the French dancing-master, guilty of coxcombry or falsehood in declaring that Voltaire and himself were the two greatest men in all Europe? No, assuredly; he but manifested a proper feeling of enthusiasm for his art, and it would have been downright hypocrisy for him to have pretended to think otherwise.

Sydney Smith, in satirizing the classical education at the English universities, says that "the Parr or the Bentley of his day would be scandalized to be put on a level with the discoverer of a neutral salt." And why not, prithee? Can we expect a great scholar, who has devoted a life to his calling, to deem any other of equal rank and importance? Shall a painter be required to feel the same admiration for the works of Mozart and Handel as for those of Raphael and Titian? Why should not the Greek or Latin scholar, who has "scorned delights and lived laborious days" to possess himself of those stubborn tongues, "glory in the detection of an anapest in the wrong place, or in the restoration of a dative case which Cranzius has passed over, and the never-dying Ernesti failed to observe"? What if a grammarian does "tower and plume himself," as Sir Thomas Browne says that he has known one to do, over a line of Horace, and show more pride in the construction of one ode than the author in the composure of the whole book"? We see nothing ridiculous in this; it is but the natural result of a passionate and absorbing love for one's pursuit.

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We are told of Baron Masères, with whom the study of abstract arithmetic was a passion, that his leading idea seemed to have been to calculate more decimal places than any one could possibly want, and to print the works of all who had done the same thing. What mathematician ever signally distinguished himself whose devotion to his science was not thus exclusive? Who would employ in a great suit a lawyer who does not bristle all over with nolle prosequis and certioraris and surrebutters, and shed tears of admiration over his Coke upon Littleton and his Fearne on "Contingent Remainders"? It is only the blockhead or hypocrite who never goes crazy with enthusiasm. "A London apprentice who did not admire the Lord Mayor's coach," says Hazlitt, "would stand a good chance of coming to be hanged." In short, to excel greatly in any profession there should be an exclusiveness, a bigotry, a blindness of attachment to it, which will make every other seem insignificant in comparison.

The world holds the same view. It will not believe in the depth of a many-sided man. To what but this were due the doubt and detraction which dogged Bulwer all his days? Had he been a novelist only, instead of being the "Admirable Crichton" of letters, novelist, essayist, satirist, dramatist, poet, historian, orator, he would have held a far higher and more undisputed place in the literary Walhalla. It was said by Jules Janin of Édouard Fournier : "Cet homme là sait tout; il ne sait que cela; mais il le sait bien." Yet Fournier, in spite of his encyclopædic culture, is an obscure man of letters.

Even when it is shown in a reprehensible calling, one cannot but admire an absorbing enthusiasm. Froissart, in his "Chronicles," tells of a reverend monk who had been

a robber in his early life, and who, growing old, used pathetically to lament that he had ever changed his profession. He said "it was a goodly sight to sally out from his castle, and to see a troop of jolly friars come riding that way, with their mules well laden with viands and rich stores; to advance toward them; to attack and overthrow them, returning to the castle with a noble booty." Even the veriest villain, if he be a consummate villain, must be more content and better pleased with himself than his halffaced counterfeit; and this simply through his force and determination of character. We should have, too, more

hope of reclaiming him and making him a blessing to the world than of reforming the cold, heartless block of a scoundrel in whom to kindle enthusiasm for anything, good or bad, would be like "creating a soul under the ribs of death."

English vs.

READER, have you ever visited Trenton American Falls, and had a chat with Mr. Moore, the Manners. proprietor of the pleasant, home-like hotel there? He used to have a fund of amusing anecdotes, one of which we well remember. He was discussing one day with a guest from England the subject of American as compared with English manners. "There," said the guest triumphantly to his host, as he pointed to a pair of booted legs resting on the window-sill of an upper room, which greeted their eyes as they walked in the garden toward the house, "there is a sample of American

manners!"

"I don't know," replied Mr. Moore, "who is the occupant of that room; but I will wager a bottle of champagne with you that he is not one of my country-men."