Weekly national intelligencer. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1841-1869, 1853-12-24

II Foster had had many eyes Shakespeare the my
minded he would have been able like Shaks-
peare to body forth the form of things unknown or
with the poets pen to turn to shapes the fitting sha
| dows painted on his mental retina
The intellectual riches Of some minds are boarded up
in roueaux Of coin ready stamped and prepared for inn
mediate use Of others the wealth to be hidden in
quartz rock in deep mountain gorges pent up in dark
and suberranean veins from which he extracted
only by 1nt Of pckaxe and mattock the precious metal
disintegrated by slow and laborious process indeed
but it leaves upon the mind Of the observer impression
of untold and exhaustess still lying fathoms
down in their native beds Minds Of this stamp, in fact
differ from those of the former much perennial spring
to change the comparison, differs from stagnnnt reser
vor which, however capacious inadequate to sup
ply the ceaseess draughts which may be drawn from Ma
ture's erwelng fountain The intellectual stores of
Foster developed and amassed by hard labor His
processes Of thought like those Of Rousseau and Cha
mers, described by themselves, were "slow but
dent In isttsr his Asthss 6S Ais ioiorousiy
bewang HIS sextreme and invariabe repugnanc< to all
literary labor every kind and almost all mental labor
in terms which remind Of the sturdy beggar who
when asked why he did not work, replied, "Ah you
don't know how lazy / ami" But greater difficulty
than this mental ps ner mpeded his intellectual move
ments About finding proper words, (says he and put
ting them in proper places have more difficulty than
could have been supposed possible any should have
after having had to work among them long but the
grand difficulty is downright scarcity of matterplan-
y, the difficulty of finding any thing to say My inven-
tive faculties exactly like the powers of snail" His
mind like our anthracite kindled slowly, but when g
nited burned intensely.
1t would be great mistake, however, to suppose that
this protracted CESSATION of his intellectual conceptions
argues want of the ecundative power which constitutes
- tbap ifa
Of literature who would reproach him with comparative
barrenness he might retor like the oness in the Greek
fable when taunted for its solitary sucking only one
but it lion" His horror of commonplaces prevented
him from inundating the world with weak and washy
flood that might have satisfied meaner genius; but
since he turned away from such sw with loathng and
disgust and his not the magic rod which could
sme the rock that it should gush forth in streams of y
ing water he perforce compelled to sink deep his
shafts with slow and tedious boring but the suices which
he thus arduouy opened fed by currents which had
their in far and still pools high table lands
IN deep tarns which drain the mountain SUBMITS Unlike
his friend Hail. he has described him, he given Of
tentimes visionary modes of thought to musings ex
empt from all regulation to that fascination Of the mys-
terous captivating by the very circumstance OF eudng
to that fearful advenurng the dark, the unknown
the awfuthose thoughts that wander through eternity
Foster breathed native and congenial element One
object of lfe says he, in his Journal should be to
accumulate great number of grand questions be ask
ed and resolved in eternity. We ask the sage, the
genius, the philosopher, the dvine-none of these can
tell; but we will open our series other respondnts
will ask angels-God" And how he loves to brood and
muse over the superavely grand and consoatory idea
of DEATH "without this radiant star" he writes to
friend without this delightful morning STAR indicating
that the umnary of Eternity is going to rise, life would
! to my view, darken into midnight melancholy" The
with which his spirit yany essayed to
peer into the dark hereafter" have in them sort OF
charmed and unearhly solemnity like the "supernatu-
raj soliciting with which the weird sisters the Blasted
Heath haunted Banquo and Macbeth He wonders at it
as OF the dark things in the Divine government that
revelation considered intended to impress and influence
our minds as well as to inform them in regard
with hereafter should have limited the commu
ncation to SO very narrow extent beyond the
fact" While weeping the unburied form Of his son,
he checks the food Of grief to exclaim, How many
things by this time he knows which books can tell ~
And the he approached in advancing age the
grand experiment" the restessy inquisitve" he
describes himself respecting that other and state Of
existence. After the death of any friend he always
seemed especially impatient to be made acquainted with
the secrets Of the invisible world "They don't come
back to tell u.s." he said, occasion OF this kind,
shortly before his death " but shall know
time" he presently added, with look Of intense
riousness.
Such speculations indicate the "wrestling thews of
mind that recols from graphing with of the mighty
questions which relate to the whence why and vr Of
the human race. Whence came L. Why here? Whittier
do goi His spirit fretted and chafed and sometimes
pined within its prisen house of clay He longs
burst away from these feshy clogs and feters which
hold him down in duranoe vile" from that superior
world where knowledge will beam into the soul without
the slow labor Of difficult acquisition" How pertinent
and natural is this conception Of heaven, formed by
man Of Fosters intellectual habits and aspirations y
Rest Z" Crest - Such is my idea of Heaven" said
Robert Hail. he upon his back wrhing beneath that
intense pain along the spine which his lifelong horn
in the flesh In Heaven shall do nothing but love,
said the amable and kindly aectioned Wilberorce 81
20 from world where all is confusion to world where
all is order exclaimed the dying Hooker who through
long life had devoted himself to the exposition Of that d
vine thing which he called whose voice Is the har-
mony of the universe aud whose seat is the bosom Of
God" But Foster who prred knowledge more than ru-
bes and who gained only by unremitting toll looked
forward with joyful hope to that upper world in which
knowledge should boam into his soul without the labor
of difficult acquisition" And, in his words, chow
many things he knows which no books tell !"
We have said that his style Of the worst but this
statement needs perhaps explanation similar to that
we have already given in accounting for the sowness with
which he excoetaed his ideas Never did strik-
r, o,emnlfv The saving that !" the stye is the man