e respectable and in good
ease, and lie down to his long rest with the non-achievements of his
life emblazoned on the very whitest marble, surmounting and glorifying
his dust.

There is a different and sterner path--I know not whether there be any
now qualified to tread it--I am not sure that even one has ever
followed it implicitly, in view of the certain meagerness of its
temporal rewards and the haste wherewith any fame acquired in a sphere
so thoroughly ephemeral as the editor's must be shrouded by the dark
waters of oblivion. This path demands an ear ever open to the plaints
of the wronged and the suffering, tho they can never repay advocacy,
and those who mainly support newspapers will be annoyed and often
exposed by it; a heart as sensitive to oppression and degradation in
the next street as if they were practised in Brazil or Japan; a pen as
ready to expose and reprove the crimes whereby wealth is amassed and
luxury enjoyed in our own country at this hour as if they had only
been committed by Turks or pagans in Asia some centuries ago.

Such an editor, could one be found or trained, need not expect to lead
an easy, indolent, or wholly joyous life--to be blest by archbishops
or followed by the approving shouts of ascendent majorities; but he
might find some recompense for their loss in the calm verdict of an
approving conscience; and the tears of the despised and the
friendless, preserved from utter despair by his efforts and
remonstrances, might freshen for a season the daisies that bloomed
above his grave.

Literature is a noble calling, but only when the call obeyed by the
aspirant issues from a world to be enlightened and blest, not from a
void stomach clamoring to be gratified and filled. Authorship is a
royal priesthood; but wo to him who rashly lays unhallowed hands on
the ark or the altar, professing a zeal for the welfare of the race
only that he may secure the confidence and sympathies of others, and
use them for his own selfish ends! If a man have no heroism in his
soul--no animating purpose beyond living easily and faring
sumptuously--I can imagine no greater mistake on his part than that of
resorting to authorship as a vocation. That such a one may achieve
what he regards as success I do not deny; but, if so, he does it at
greater risk and by greater exertion than would have been required to
win it in any other pursuit. No; it can not be wise in a selfish, or
sordid, or sensual man to devote hims