Connecticut western news., 1895-12-26
GENIUS.

The favorite idea of genius among ns is of one who never studies. or studies nobody can tell when-at mid night, or at odd times and intervals, and now and then strikes out "at heat" as the phrase is, some wonderful This is character that has figured largely in the history of our in the persons of our Field ings, our Savsges. and our Steeles. who took up the pen, as msgician's wand. to supply their wants, and, when the pressure of necessity was relieved, re- sorted again to idleness. Your real genius is an idle, irregular, vagabond sort of parsonage, who muses in the fields, or dreams by the fireside. whose strong impulses-that is the cant of 1t must needs hurry him into wild ir- regularities. or foolish ecoentricity; who sbhors order, and can bear no restrsint, and eschews all labor-such 8 one as Newton or Milton! What? They must have been irregular, else they were no geniuses "The young man," it is often said, "has genius enough. if he would only study" Now, the truth is, as shall take the liberty to state it, that the genius will study; it is that in the mind which does study. That is the very na ture of it. I care not to say that it will always use books. All study Is mol reading, any more than all reading ii study. Attention 1t is-though othel qualities belong to this transcenden power attention it is, that is the very soul of genius. Not the fixed eye, no the boring over hook, but the fxed thought. It is, in fact, an action of th' mind, which is steadily concentrated up on one idea or one series of ideas, whict collects in one point the rays of thu soul, till they search, penetrate, ana fire the whole train of its thoughts And, while the fire burns within, thu outside may be indeed cold, indifferent negligent, absent in appearance. H' may be an idler or 8 wanderer, appar ently without aim or intent, but still th fire burns within. And what thougl '.it bursts forth" at length, as has beel said, like volcanic fres," with sponta neous, original native force? It onl, shows the intense action of the element beneath. What though it breaks fortl like lightning from the cloud? Tn electric fire had been collecting in tn Armament through many silent, cleal and calm day.
 What though the might of genius ap pears in one decisive blow, struck Ii some moment of high debate, or at tn crisis of nations peril? That might energy, though it may have heaved i the breast of Demosthenes, was once
 feeble infant thought. A mothers ey watched over its dawning. A father care guarded its early youth. IL 500 trod with youthful steps the halls C learning, and found other fathers { wake and to watch for it, as it find them here. It went on, but silence wa upon it's path, and the deep struggling of the inward soul silently ministere to it. The clements around breathe upon 1t. and touched it to finer issues. Tho golden ray of heaven fell upon il
 and ripened its expanding faculties The slow revolutions of years slowl added to it's collected energies an
 treasures, till, in it's hour of glory, l stood forth embodied in the form of Ii, ing, commanding, irresistible eloquenc, The world wonders at the manifestation and says. "Strange, strange, that
 should come thus rnsought, unpr'
 meditated, ,unprepared!" But the trut
 is, there is no more miracle in it tha
 there is in the towering of the prem
 nent forest-tree, or in the flowing of tt mighty and irresistible river, or in tt
 wealth and waving of the boundle' harvest. c. P. B.