hought," says a master,
"that is genius"; but is not genius primarily the arrival of a thought
able to authenticate itself, to compel trust, and make its own value
known against the sneers or anger of the world? From my own thought once
reached there is but one appeal,--to my own thought: from Philip sober
to Philip more sober.

The good spirit appears as a spark in our embers, and draws out these
careful hands to ward itself from every gust,--sets our tasks and crowns
them. We know that from first desire to last performance wisdom is
altogether a grace. Wisdom is this wish for wisdom, already given in the
readiness to receive. We have not cared for it, but it has cared for us.

Grown stronger, it is a guide, and needs none. Turner sees what he must
love; there is no rule for such seeing: what he does not love is hid
from him; there is no rule for such omission. It is in the eye, not more
a happy opening than a happy closing. A private ordinance, dividing man
into men, makes the same creature a wall to one, an open door to his
neighbor. The value of man appears to Scott in feudalism, to Wordsworth
in contemplation, to Byron in impatience, to Kant in certainty, to
Calvin in authority, to Calame in landscape, to Newton in measure, to
Carlyle in retribution, to Shakspeare in society, to Dante in the
contrast of right and wrong.

One man by grandeur sees mountains in the coals of his grate; another by
gentleness only sunshine and grasses on Monadnock. You will not say that
he chooses, but that he is chosen so to see. Light opens the eye without
our intention, and we are at no trouble to paint on the retina what must
there appear. Success is fidelity to that which must appear. Weak men
discuss forever the laws of Art, and contrive how to paint, questioning
whether this or that element should have emphasis or be shown. If there
is any question, there will be no Art. The man must feel to do, and
what he does from overmastering feeling will convince and be forever
right. The work is organic which grows so above composition or plan.
After you are engaged by the symphony, there is no escape, no pause;
each note springs out of each as branch from branch of a tree. It could
be no otherwise; it cannot be otherwise conceived. Why could not I have
found this sequence inevitable, as well as another? Plainly, the
symphony was discovered, not made,--was written before man, like
astronomy in the sky.

Only the mastery of one who is ma