The daily exchange. [volume] (Baltimore, Md.) 1858-1861, 1860-09-14

graphical Recolleetions,' in the atlantic Aonthly,
protests, in the following passage, against the
fashion Of holding men of genius to far more rigid
accountability than less intellectual people, for
their sins or weaknesses:
awe do not admit that, because man has pub
lished a volume picture, he has published him
self, communicated his soul from the sanctuary
of privacy, and made his life as common as tav-
ern- threshold to every blockhead in the parishOr
that anv Pharisec who kept carefully to windward
of his virtues, cut of the way of infection, has
thereby earned the right to mismoraiZe his fail
ings after he is dumbly detenceless. The moral
compasses that are too short for the alteration
may be, must be, unequal to the orbit. Wewould
not deny that Burns a chamberer and a
drunkard because he was a great poet; but We
would not admit that whiskey and wenches made
him any the less the most richly endowed genius of
his century, with just title to the love and admira-
tion of men, 1t is net for us to decide whether he,
who, by doubling the suggestive and associative
power of any thought, fancy, feeling or natural OBJ
Ject, has so far added permanently to the sum Of
human happiness, is not sure of n welcome and a
well done from the Infinite Fatherliness as he that
has turned an honest penny by printing a
catechism; but we are sure that it is a
shallow cant which holds up the errors of
men of genius as if they were especial
warnings and proofs of how little the rarest gifts
avail. Is it intended to put men on their guard
against being geniuses? That is scarcely called for
till those who yield to the temptation become more
been geniuses, but we chose ra her to be good
and dull? Self-denial is always praiseworthy, and
reconcile ourselves to the Ovid lost in conside
ration of the Deacon gained. But if it be meant
that the danger was in the genius, we peny it al
together. Burns genius was the good
thing he had, and it was always, as it always
must be, good, and only good, the leaven of
uncontaminate heaven in him that would not
let him sink contentedy into the sty of oblivion
with the million other tipplers and loose-iyers
of his century. 1t was his weakness of char
acter, and not his strength pride of intellect.
that betrayed him. and to call his faults of
genius is mischievous fallacy. lfthev were, then
they were lesson for the rest of u.s. if they were
not to call them is to encourage certain gin-and
water philosophers who would faiu extenuate their
unpleasant vices by the plea that they are the ne
cessary complement of unusual powers,-as if the
path to Immortality were through the kennel, and
fine verses to be written only at the painful
sacrifice of bilking your washerwoman.
eve are over-fond of drawing monitory morals
from the lives of gifted persons, tacking together
our little -by-tweve pinfods to impound breachy
more than we have any business to know of the
private concerns of such persons that we have the
opportunity. We are tn anklul that the character
of Shakespeare is wrapped safely away from us in
un- Boswellable night. Samuel Taylor Coleridge
the man stood forever in the way of Samuel Taylor
Coleridge the poet and meta-phy yscian, and the
fault OF the poppyuce In his nature is laid at the
door of the laudanum he bought of the apotheca-
could not hinder De Quincy from writing his
twenty-five volumes. To us nothing is more pain
full, and nothing seems more cruelty useless, than
the parading of mortal weaknesses, especially of
those to whom are indebted for delight and
teaching. For an inherent weakness has no lesson
of avoidance in it, being helpless from the first,
and by the doom of its own nature growing more
and more helpless to the last, not more so in the
example than in him who is to profit by it, and
who is likely to have his appetite lattered by
good company than his fear aroused by the evil
consequence. Because the swans have vile habit
of over-eating themselves, shall we nail them to
the barn-door as a moral lesson to the crows?
fThere is, doubtless, great deal to be taught by
biography; but it is by the mistakes of men that
we learn, and not by their weaknesses. To see
clearly an error of judgment and its consequences
may be of positive service to us in the conduct of
life, while vice of temperament concerns not
at all in private men, and only so far in statesmen
and rulers it way have been influential in hiso
ry as modifer of action, or is essential to an
erstandiDg OF it as an explainer of motive"
From the Professors Story in the same Magazine
we quote these remarks of DR.. Holmes upon the
obligation of every man to think, who has capacity
enough to do so:
'In our disgust we are liable to be intoerant. We
forget that weakness is not in itself sin. We for
get that even cowardce may call for most leni-
ent judgment, if it spring from innate infirmty.
Who of us does not look with great tenderness on
the young chieftain in the Fair Maid of Perth,
love companionship and sympathy; some of us may
love them too much. All of us more or less i'm
aginative in our theology. Some of us may find the
aid of material symbols comfort, if not a neces-
sty. The boldest thinker may have his moments
of langour and encouragement when he feels as if
he could willingly exchange faiths with the old bel
dame crossing herself at the cathedral door,-nay,
that if he could drop all coherent thought, and lie
in the f1owery meadow with the brown-eyed SOL
emny untAinkng cattle, looking up to the sky,
and all their simple consciousness staining itself
blue, then down to the grass, aud life turning to a
mere greenness, blended with confused scents of
herbs,-no individual mind d-movement such men
are teased WITH but the great calm cattlesense of
all time and all places that know the milky smell of
herds-if he could be like these, he would be con-
tent to be driven home by the cow boy, and share
the grassy banquet of the king of ancient Babylon
Let us be very generous, then, in our Judgment of
those who leave the front ranks of thought for the
company of the meek non-combatants who follow
with the baggage and provisions. Age, Illness too
much wear and tear, hafformed paralysis, may
bring any of Us to this pass. But while we can
think and maintain the rights of our own individu-
ality against every human combination, let us not
forget to caution all who disposed to waver that
there is cowardce which is criminal, and long
ing for rest which it is baseness to indulge. God
help him over whose dead soul in his living body
must be uttered the sad supplication, Requescat
pace !"
Hon. ROBERT c. WINTHRoP.-The fellOw-citzens
and many friends of this distinguished gentleman
will rejoice to learn of his arrival in this country,
after an absence of more than year. Mr. Win
throp has been detained abroad longer than he
originally contemplated, we believe, by reasons of