ns of Invention seeks his relaxation and
repose? Man's genius is a bird that cannot be always on the wing; when
the craving for the actual world is felt, it is a hunger that must be
appeased. They who command best the ideal, enjoy ever most the real.
See the true artist, when abroad in men's thoroughfares, ever observant,
ever diving into the heart, ever alive to the least as to the greatest
of the complicated truths of existence; descending to what pedants would
call the trivial and the frivolous. From every mesh in the social web,
he can disentangle a grace. And for him each airy gossamer floats in
the gold of the sunlight. Know you not that around the animalcule that
sports in the water there shines a halo, as around the star (The monas
mica, found in the purest pools, is encompassed with a halo. And this
is frequent amongst many other species of animalcule.) that revolves in
bright pastime through the space? True art finds beauty everywhere. In
the street, in the market-place, in the hovel, it gathers food for the
hive of its thoughts. In the mire of politics, Dante and Milton selected
pearls for the wreath of song.

"Who ever told you that Raphael did not enjoy the life without, carrying
everywhere with him the one inward idea of beauty which attracted and
imbedded in its own amber every straw that the feet of the dull man
trampled into mud? As some lord of the forest wanders abroad for its
prey, and scents and follows it over plain and hill, through brake and
jungle, but, seizing it at last, bears the quarry to its unwitnessed
cave,--so Genius searches through wood and waste, untiringly and
eagerly, every sense awake, every nerve strained to speed and strength,
for the scattered and flying images of matter, that it seizes at
last with its mighty talons, and bears away with it into solitudes
no footstep can invade. Go, seek the world without; it is for art the
inexhaustible pasture-ground and harvest to the world within!"

"You comfort me," said Glyndon, brightening. "I had imagined my
weariness a proof of my deficiency! But not now would I speak to you
of these labours. Pardon me, if I pass from the toil to the reward.
You have uttered dim prophecies of my future, if I wed one who, in
the judgment of the sober world, would only darken its prospects and
obstruct its ambition. Do you speak from the wisdom which is experience,
or that which aspires to prediction?"

"Are they not allied? Is it not he best accustomed