and fences as we whirl through this changing scene, but on remoter and larger objects, on the slow-revolving circle of the far hills, on the quiet stars.  Why should I hasten with my foolish plan?  Prosperity is over all, not in my foolish plan.  What is a fortune, a reputation,—­what even genuine influence, if you consider the future of one or of the race?  Only little aims bring care.  Why run after success?  That is success which follows:  success should be cosmic, a new creation, not any trick or feat.  To be man is the only success.  For this we lie back grandly with total application to the cause.  Why run after knowledge?  A large mind circles all the primal facts from its own stand-point, and needs never tread the curious round of science, history, and art.  Where it is, is Nature:  therefore it is calm and free.  The wise men of my knowledge were farmers, drovers, traders, learned beyond the book.  You cannot feed but you put me in communication with all forests, fields, streams, seas.  Give me one companion, and between us two is quickly repeated the history of the race.  In a plant, an animal, a day or year, in elements, their feuds and fruitful marriages, in a private or public history, the thinker is admitted to the end of thought.  A scholar can add nothing to my perfect wonder, though he bring Egypt, Assyria, and Greece.  I find myself where I was, in Egypt, Assyria, and Greece:  I find the old earth, the old sky, the old astonishment of man.  Caesar and the grasshopper, both are alike within my knowledge and beyond.  There is some vague report of a remote divine, at which he will smile who finds no least escape from the divine.  Two points are given in every regard, man and the world, subject, we say, and object, a creature seen and a creature seeing, marvelling, knowing, ignorant.  Either of these openings will lead quickly to light too pure for our organs, and launch us on the sea beyond every shore.  The artist studies a fair face; there is no supplement to his delight.  In temples, statues, pictures, poems, symphonies, and actions, only the same eternal splendor shines.  It is the sun which lights all lands,—­“that planet,” as Dante sings,

  “Which leads men straight on every road.”

He is delivered there at home to Beauty, which makes and is the world.

Genius is royal knowledge.  In the nearest need it studies all ages and all worlds.  Let me understand my neighbors and my meat; you may have the libraries and schools.  I read here living languages,—­the eye, the attitude and temperament, the wish and will:  Hebrew and Greek must wait.  He who knows how to value “Hamlet” will never subscribe for your picture of “Shakspeare’s Study.”  Great intelligence runs quickly through our primers, our cities, constitutions, galleries, traditions, cathedrals, creeds.  The long invention of the race is a tortuous, obscure way.  Must I creep all my fresh years in that labyrinth, and postpone youth to the end of age?  What need of so much experience and contrivance, if without contrivance, if by simplicity, the children surely and beautifully live?