g away through the grass like a snake. Had the Deity
purposed that man should be miserable, he would surely never have placed
him in so fair a world. Perhaps much of our unhappiness originates in
our mistaking our proper scope, and thus setting out from the first with
a false aim."

"Unquestionably," I replied, "there is no man who has not some part to
perform; and, if it be a great and uncommon part, and the powers which
fit him for it proportionably great and uncommon, nature would be in
error could he slight it with impunity. See, there is a wild bee bending
the flower beside you. Even that little creature has a capacity of
happiness and misery; it derives its sense of pleasure from whatever
runs in the line of its instincts, its experience of unhappiness from
whatever thwarts and opposes them; and can it be supposed that so wise a
law should regulate the instincts of only inferior creatures? No, my
friend, it is surely a law of our nature also."

"And have you not something else to infer?" said the poet.

"Yes," I replied, "that you are occupied differently from what the scope
and constitution of your mind demand; differently both in your hours of
employment and of relaxation. But do take heart, you will yet find your
proper place, and all shall be well."

"Alas! no, my friend," said he, rising from the sward. "I could once
entertain such a hope; but I cannot now. My mind is no longer what it
was to me in my happier days, a sort of _terra incognita_, without
bounds or limits. I can see over and beyond it, and have fallen from all
my hopes regarding it. It is not so much the gloom of present
circumstances that disheartens me, as a depressing knowledge of myself,
an abiding conviction that I am a weak dreamer, unfitted for every
occupation of life, and not less so for the greater employments of
literature than for any of the others. I feel that I am a little man and
a little poet, with barely vigour enough to make one half effort at a
time, but wholly devoid of the sustaining will, that highest faculty of
the highest order of minds, which can direct a thousand vigorous efforts
to the accomplishment of one important object. Would that I could
exchange my half celebrity--and it can never be other than a half
celebrity--for a temper as equable and a fortitude as unshrinking as
yours! But I weary you with my complaints; I am a very coward; and you
will deem me as selfish as I am weak."

We parted. The poet, sadly and