he is working on. The poet breathes upon the dictionary, and lo!
it flushes and breaks into flower. But then he is breathing on words.
The material of such artists is a joy in itself. They are workers in the
precious metals. Theophilus Londonderry had very different material to
mould,--an old chapel and some very dull humanity. Humanity is not a
precious metal, but if you know how to use it, it is excellent clay,--a
clay not without streaks of gold.

What was Theophilus Londonderry's purpose with his material, his will
towards the uncreated world over which his young vitalising spirit was
moving? To save it? Yes, incidentally; but primarily to express himself
by means of it, to set it vibrating to the rhythm of his nature, to set
it dancing to a tune of his piping. Already he was being stamped in gold
on Jenny's face. The coarser face of the world was to wear his smile
too. For the pebble had only been thrown in at New Zion. Who knows to
what coasts of fame the imperious ripples of his personality would
circle on before they touched the shores of death?

We may be polite as we please to humanity in the mass, and humanity in
occasional rarely encountered individuals is--well, divine; and to such
we gladly and humbly and rapturously pay divine honours. But in any
given thousand human beings, poor or rich, what would be your
calculation for the average of such divine,--how many faces would you
fall down and worship, how many hands would you care to take, how many
hearts would you dare to trust?

Alas, the rather good eyes must go so often with the disastrous chin,
the mouth succeed where the nose fails, the expansive impulse be checked
by the narrow habit, the little gleam of gold be lost in the clay.

Preponderant charm does not crowd into chapels or anywhere else to be
minted, it is busy on some vantage height of its own, impressing its own
image; and it is with minds maimed by the cruel machinery of life,
natures stunted and starved by adverse and innutritive condition, that
the artist in man must be satisfied. With what pathetic little flashes
of faculty, what fleeting and illusory glimpses of insight, what waifs
and strays of attractiveness, must he work and be happy, and with what
a thankfulness that the tenth rate is not twentieth or thirtieth!

Then, too, how often must the intractible material be impressed again
and again and again before it begins to wear the first trace of your
image. Once a poet has impress