Wheeling daily intelligencer. [volume] (Wheeling, Va. [W. Va.]) 1852-1859, 1858-03-26

serve, am talking about minds. won't say,
the more intellect the less capacity for loving;
for that would do wrong to the understanding
and reason;-but, the other hand, that the
brain often runs away with the hearts best
blood, which gives the world few pages of wis
dom or sentiment or poetry, instead OF max
ing one other heart happy, have no question
If ones intimate in love or friendship cannot
or does not share all ones intellectual tastes or
pursuits, that is u small matter. Intellectual
companions can be found easily in men and
books. After ALL il we think of it, most of the
worlds loves and friendships have been between
people that could not read nor write.
But to radiate the heat of the affections into
clod, which absorbs all that is poured into it
but never warns beneath the sunshine ofsmiles
or the pressure Of hand or liP,-this is the great
martyrdom Of sensitive beingS,-most of all IN
that perpetual au'odd .ts where young woman
hood is the sacrifice.
You noticed, perhaps, what just said about
the loves and friendships of illiterate PERSONS
that is, of the human race, with few cxcep-
tons here and there | like books, was born
and bred among Them and have the easy feel
ing, when get into their presence, that stable
boy has among horses. l don't think under
value them either as companions or as instruc-
tors. But can't help remembering that the
worlds great men have not commonly been great
scholars, nor its great scholars great men. The
Hebrew patriarchs had small libraries think,
| if any; yet they represent to our imaginations
very complete idea of manhood, and, think, if
We could ask in Abraham TO dine with us men
of letters next Saturday, we should feel hOnOred
by his company.
What | wanted to say about books is this:
that there are times in which every active
mind feels itself above any and all human
books.
think a man must have good opinion of
himself, Sir.-said the divinity student,-whO
should feel himself above Shakespeare at any
time.
My young friend, III rcpled.-the man who is
never conscious of any state Of feeling or of in
tellectual effort entirely beyond expression by
any form of words whatsoever is mere creature
of language. hardly believe there are
any such men. Why, think for moment of
the power of music. The nerves that make
us alive TO it spread out $50 the Professor tells
mel in the most sensitive region of the marrow,
just where is is widening to run upwards into
the hemisPhcres. 1t has its seat i'll the region
of sense rather than of thought. Yet it pro-
duceS continuous and, it were, logical
quencc of emotional and intellectual changes;
but how different from trains of thought pro-
perl how entirely beyond the reach ofsymbolS!
Think of human passions as compared with all
phrases Did you ever hear of a mans grow
ing lean by the reading of ''Romeo and Julie"
OF blowing his brains out because Desdemona
was maligned? There are good many SYM
bols, even, that are more expressive than words.
| L reucHuer a young WIG WHO Lau 10 part Win
her husband for time. She did not write
mournful poem; indeed, she silent person,
and perhaps hardly said word about it, but
she Guietly turned of deep Oran.,e color with
jaundicc. great many people in this world
have but one form of rhetoric for their pro-
| foundeSt experiences, -namely, to waste away
and die. When n man can read, his paroXysm
of feeling is passing. When he can redd his
! thought has slackened its hOld-YOu talk about
reading Shakespeare, using him as an expression
for the highest intellect and you wonder that
any common person should be so presumptuous
as to suppose his thought rise above the
| text which lies before him. But think mo-
ment. A child's reading of Shakespeare is
thing, and Coleridge'S or Schlegel's reading of
him is another. The saturation-point of each
mind differs from that of every other. But
think it is as true for the small mind which can
only take up little rs for the great which
takes up much, that the suggested trains of
thought and feeling ought always to rise above
not the author, but the readers mental
sion of the author, whoever he may be.
think most readers of Shakespeare some
times find themselves thrown into exalted men
tai conditions like those produced by music
Then they may drop the book, tn pass at once
into the region of thought without words. We
may happen to be very dull folks, You and l.
and probably are, unless there is some particu
lar reason to suppose the contrary. But we get
glimpseS now and then of sphere of spiritual
possibilities, where we, dull as we are now, may
sail in vast circles round the largest compass of
earthly inteligences.
confess there are times when feel like the
friend l mentioned to you some time ago.
hate the very sight of book. Sometimes it
becomes almost physical necessity to talk out
what is in the mind, before putting anything
else into it 1t is very bad to have thoughts
and feelings which We're meant to come out in
talk, strike in, as they say of some complaints
that ought to show outwardly.
always believed in Iife rather than in books
suppose every day of earth, witt its hundred
thousands deaths and something moro of births,
with its loves and hates its triumphs and de-
feats, its pangs and blisses has more of human
ity in it than all the books that were ever writ
ten, put together. believe the flowers growing
at this moment send zap more fragrance TO heav-
en- than was ever enhaled from all the essences
ever distilled.
HON. Bill MoNTGoNEnY's sPEEon.-A large
space is takenup in the congressional Globe,
n