very differently when circumstances unexpectedly call out the solid qualities he possesses, unsuspected before.  A man devoid of brilliancy may on occasion show that he possesses great good sense, or that he has the power of sticking to his task in spite of discouragement.  Let a man be placed where dogged perseverance will stand him in stead, and you may see what he can do when he has but a chance.  The especial weight which has held some men back, the thing which kept them from doing great things and attaining great fame, has been just this:  that they were not able to say or to write what they have thought and felt.  And, indeed, a great poet is nothing more than the one man in a million who has the gift to express that which has been in the mind and heart of multitudes.  If even the most commonplace of human beings could write all the poetry he has felt, he would produce something that would go straight to the hearts of many.

It is touching to witness the indications and vestiges of sweet and admirable things which have been subjected to a weight which has entirely crushed them down,—­things which would have come out into beauty and excellence, if they had been allowed a chance.  You may witness one of the saddest of all the losses of Nature in various old maids.  What kind hearts are there running to waste!  What pure and gentle affections blossom to be blighted!  I dare say you have heard a young lady of more than forty sing, and you have seen her eyes fill with tears at the pathos of a very commonplace verse.  Have you not thought that there was the indication of a tender heart which might have made some good man happy, and, in doing so, made herself happy, too?  But it was not to be.  Still, it is sad to think that sometimes upon cats and dogs there should be wasted the affection of a kindly human being!  And you know, too, how often the fairest promise of human excellence is never suffered to come to fruit.  You must look upon gravestones to find the names of those who promised to be the best and noblest specimens of the race.  They died in early youth,—­perhaps in early childhood.  Their pleasant faces, their singular words and ways, remain, not often talked of, in the memories of subdued parents, or of brothers and sisters now grown old, but never forgetting how that one of the family, that was as the flower of the flock, was the first to fade.  It has been a proverbial saying, you know, even from heathen ages, that those whom the gods love die young.  It is but an inferior order of human beings that makes the living succession to carry on the human race.

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WHY HAS THE NORTH FELT AGGRIEVED WITH ENGLAND?