men's eyes,
and act by feelings often even contrary to their own: they wear a mask on
their face, and only sing a tune they have caught. Some hierophant in
their mysteries proclaims their elect whom they have to initiate, and
their profane who are to stand apart under their ban. They bend to the
spirit of the age, but they do not elevate the public to them; they care
not for truth, but only study to produce effect, and they do nothing for
fame but what obtains an instant purpose. Yet their fame is not therefore
the more real, for everything connected with fashion becomes obsolete. Her
ear has a great susceptibility of weariness, and her eye rolls for
incessant novelty. Never was she earnest for anything. Men's minds with
her become tarnished and old-fashioned as furniture. But the steams of
rich dinners, the eye which sparkles with the wines of France, the
luxurious night which flames with more heat and brilliancy than God has
made the day, this is the world the man of coterie-celebrity has chosen;
and the Epicurean, as long as his senses do not cease to act, laughs at
the few who retire to the solitary midnight lamp. Posthumous fame is--a
nothing! Such men live like unbelievers in a future state, and their
narrow calculating spirit coldly dies in their artificial world: but true
genius looks at a nobler source of its existence; it catches inspiration
in its insulated studies; and to the great genius, who feels how his
present is necessarily connected with his future celebrity, posthumous
fame is a reality, for the sense acts upon him!

The habitudes of genius, before genius loses its freshness in this
society, are the mould in which the character is cast; and these, in spite
of all the disguise of the man, will make him a distinct being from the
man of society. Those who have assumed the literary character often for
purposes very distinct from literary ones, imagine that their circle is
the public; but in this factitious public all their interests, their
opinions, and even their passions, are temporary, and the admirers with
the admired pass away with their season. "It is not sufficient that we
speak the same language," says a witty philosopher, "but we must learn
their dialect; we must think as they think, and we must echo their
opinions, as we act by imitation." Let the man of genius then dread to
level himself to the mediocrity of feeling and talent required in such
circles of society, lest he become one of themselv