Yes! to the very presence of the man of genius will the world spontaneously pay their tribute of respect, of admiration, or of love.  Many a pilgrimage has he lived to receive, and many a crowd has followed his footsteps!  There are days in the life of genius which repay its sufferings.  DEMOSTHENES confessed he was pleased when even a fishwoman of Athens pointed him out.  CORNEILLE had his particular seat in the theatre, and the audience would rise to salute him when he entered.  At the presence of RAYNAL in the House of Commons, the Speaker was requested to suspend the debate till that illustrious foreigner, who had written on the English parliament, was accommodated with a seat.  SPINOSA, when he gained an humble livelihood by grinding optical glasses, at an obscure village in Holland, was visited by the first general in Europe, who, for the sake of this philosophical conference, suspended the march of the army.

In all ages and in all countries has this feeling been created.  It is neither a temporary ebullition nor an individual honour.  It comes out of the heart of man.  It is the passion of great souls.  In Spain, whatever was most beautiful in its kind was described by the name of the great Spanish bard:[A] everything excellent was called a Lope.  Italy would furnish a volume of the public honours decreed to literary men; nor is that spirit extinct, though the national character has fallen by the chance of fortune.  METASTASIO and TIRABOSCHI received what had been accorded to PETRARCH and to POGGIO.  Germany, patriotic to its literary characters, is the land of the enthusiasm of genius.  On the borders of the Linnet, in the public walk of Zurich, the monument of GESNER, erected by the votes of his fellow-citizens attests their sensibility; and a solemn funeral honoured the remains of KLOPSTOCK, led by the senate of Hamburgh, with fifty thousand votaries, so penetrated by one universal sentiment, that this multitude preserved a mournful silence, and the interference of the police ceased to be necessary through the city at the solemn burial of the man of genius.  Has even Holland proved insensible?  The statue of ERASMUS, in Rotterdam, still animates her young students, and offers a noble example to her neighbours of the influence even of the sight of the statue of a man of genius.  Travellers never fail to mention ERASMUS when Basle occupies their recollections; so that, as Bayle observes, “He has rendered the place of his death as celebrated as that of his birth.”  In France, since Francis I. created genius, and Louis XIV. protected it, the impulse has been communicated to the French people.  There the statues of their illustrious men spread inspiration on the spots which living they would have haunted:—­in their theatres, the great dramatists; in their Institute their illustrious authors; in their public edifices, congenial men of genius.[B] This is worthy of the country which privileged the family of LA FONTAINE to be for ever exempt from taxes, and decreed that “the productions of the mind were not seizable,” when the creditors of CREBILLON would have attached the produce of his tragedies.