follows thought; he leaves his meat, and by some transubstantiation feeds on the wind; he no longer sees the pillars of Hercules on a sixpence; he is mad for the hour, if a majority shall say what is madness.  Meanwhile his field is unploughed; and if he falls from this ecstasy, look to see an harassed, embittered man.  The birds sing as they pick up the corn, but wisdom is not so quickly convertible into meal, and if he cannot feed always on it, let him never seek the Muse.  Our poor half-genius vibrates miserably between truth and the dinner-pot, comes back from his apocalypse, and cries for admiration, gold-lace, hair-powder, and wine.  That is no apocalypse from which a man returns to whine and beg.  Burns complains of Scotland and poverty, Byron of England and respectability, and they are both so far paupers unfed at home.  Wordsworth finds London a wilderness, and goes more than content to good company in lonely Cumberland, to eat a crust and drink water with the gods.  Socrates is barefooted.  He has one want so pressing that he can have no other want, and has set his lips to a cup which hides his bare feet from his eyes:  with a single garment for winter and summer, he draws the universe around him a garment for the mind.

If the first flashes of perception dazzle, they are rays of daylight to one emerging from the cave of sense.  The eye becomes wonted to truth, and that is now the least of his convictions which yesterday struck Paul from his horse, and rebuked him as fire from the sky.  Truth is breath, and only for the first uncertain moment of life we use it to cry and complain.  Inspiration is morning, not a flash to deepen the dark.

Popular literature is some description of a state which men think they might enjoy:  it is no record of joy.  But the fool’s paradise would be dreary even for the fool; he is his own paradise, and will be.  Our early fancy is no transcript of the divine method, and is sternly rejected by all who suspect a perfection hidden in the day.  A few works are great which celebrate the charm of actual effort, and the furtherance of Nature for the brave.  Homer, Shakspeare, Goethe, need never exaggerate or leave the earth behind:  in their experience it carries well the sky.  Every vital thought is some pleasure in running, waking, loving, contending, helping,—­is valor dealing gayly with the homely old forces and needs.  The marrow is sweet for him who can crack it, in the roughest or the smoothest bone.  One is born with a key to the gladness of Nature, and glows with the day’s work, the touch of hands, the prospect of to-morrow,—­love’s production and husbandry, the old worn grass and sunshine, the winter wind, the games and squabbles of children and of men.  Why is life for John weariness, for James every moment fresh fire out of the sky?  He who finds what he wants, or makes what he wants, is a god.  I know well the hope of saints and sages, how they connect this life with endless stages beyond,