d individuality to habits of thought and modes
of expression; in brief, that great occasions will have great
instruments, and there never was yet a noted time that had not noted
men. Dull, jog-trot, money-making, commercial times will make, if they
do not find, dull, jog-trot, money-making, commercial men: in times when
ostentation and expense are the measures of respect, when men live
rather for the world's opinion than their own, poverty becomes not only
the evil but the shame, not only the curse but the disgrace, and will be
shunned by every man as a pestilence; every one will fling away
immortality, to avoid it; will sink, as far as he can, his art in his
trade; and _he_ will be the greatest genius who can turn most money.

It may be urged that true genius has the power not only to _take_
opportunities, but to make them: true, it may make such opportunities as
the time in which it lives affords; but these opportunities will be
great or small, noble or ignoble, as the time is eventful or otherwise.
All depends upon the time, and you might as well have expected a Low
Dutch epic poet in the time of the great herring fishery, as a Napoleon,
a Demosthenes, a Cicero in this, by some called the nineteenth, but
which we take leave to designate the "_dot-and-carry-one_" century. If a
Napoleon were to arise at any corner of any London street, not five
seconds would elapse until he would be "_hooked_" off to the
station-house by Superintendent DOGSNOSE of the D division, with an
exulting mob of men and boys hooting at his heels: if Demosthenes or
Cicero, disguised as Chartist orators, mounting a tub at Deptford, were
to Philippicize, or entertain this motley auditory with speeches against
Catiline or Verres, straightway the Superintendent of the X division,
with a _posse_ of constables at his heels, dismounts the patriot orator
from his tub, and hands him over to a plain-spoken business-like justice
of the peace, who regards an itinerant Cicero in the same unsympathizing
point of view with any other vagabond.

What is become of the eloquence of the bar? Why is it that flowery
orators find no grist coming to their mills? How came it that, at
Westminster Hall, Charles Philips missed his market? What is the reason,
that if you step into the Queen's Bench, or Common Pleas, or Exchequer,
you will hear no such thing as a speech--behold no such animal as an
orator--only a shrewd, plain, hard-working, steady man, called an
attorney-g