ndency comes over him.--I feel ashamed,
sometimes,--said he, the other day,--to think how far my worst
songs fall below my best. It sometimes seems to me, as I know it
does to others who have told me so, that they ought to be ALL
BEST,--if not in actual execution, at least in plan and motive. I
am grateful--he continued--for all such criticisms. A man is
always pleased to have his most serious efforts praised, and the
highest aspect of his nature get the most sunshine.

Yet I am sure, that, in the nature of things, many minds must
change their key now and then, on penalty of getting out of tune or
losing their voices. You know, I suppose,--he said,--what is meant
by complementary colors? You know the effect, too, which the
prolonged impression of any one color has on the retina. If you
close your eyes after looking steadily at a RED object, you see a
GREEN image.

It is so with many minds,--I will not say with all. After looking
at one aspect of external nature, or of any form of beauty or
truth, when they turn away, the COMPLEMENTARY aspect of the same
object stamps itself irresistibly and automatically upon the mind.
Shall they give expression to this secondary mental state, or not?

When I contemplate--said my friend, the Poet--the infinite
largeness of comprehension belonging to the Central Intelligence,
how remote the creative conception is from all scholastic and
ethical formulae, I am led to think that a healthy mind ought to
change its mood from time to time, and come down from its noblest
condition,--never, of course, to degrade itself by dwelling upon
what is itself debasing, but to let its lower faculties have a
chance to air and exercise themselves. After the first and second
floor have been out in the bright street dressed in all their
splendors, shall not our humble friends in the basement have their
holiday, and the cotton velvet and the thin-skinned jewelry--simple
adornments, but befitting the station of those who wear them--show
themselves to the crowd, who think them beautiful, as they ought
to, though the people up stairs know that they are cheap and
perishable?

--I don't know that I may not bring the Poet here, some day or
other, and let him speak for himself. Still I think I can tell you
what he says quite as well as he could do it.--Oh,--he said to me,
one day,--I am but a hand-organ man,--say rather, a hand-organ.
Life turns the winch, and fancy or accident pulls out the stops. I