e brim of the instincts of the popular
genius. It left its traces as it passed, and the minds of all who saw
and heard rested in delightful wonder till something new happened. But
the fact which printed Rumor throws through the atmosphere is coupled
not with, the beauty of poetry, but with the madness of dissertation.
Everybody is not only informed that the Jackats defeated the Magnats on
the banks of the Kaiger on the last day of last week, but this news is
conveyed to them in connection with a series of revelations about the
relations of said fact to the universe. The primordial germ is not
poetical, but dissertational. It tends to no organic creation, but to
any abnormal and multitudinous display of suggestions, hypotheses, and
prophecies. The item is shaped as it passes, not by the hopes and fears
of the soul, but grows by accumulation of the dull details of prose. We
have neither the splendid bewilderments of the twelfth, nor the cold
illumination of the eighteenth century, but bewilderments without
splendor, and coldness without illumination. The world is too wide-awake
for thought,--the atmosphere is too bright for intellectual
achievements. We have the wonders and sensations of a day; but where are
the fathomless profundities, the long contemplations, and the silent
solemnities of life? The newspapers are marvels of mental industry. They
show how much work can be done in a day, but they never last more than a
day. Sad will it be when the genius of ephemerality has invaded all
departments of human actions and human motives! Farewell then to deep
thoughts, to sublime self-sacrifice, to heroic labors for lasting
results! Time is turned into a day, the mind knows only momentary
impressions, the weary way of art is made as short as a turnpike, and
the products of genius last only about as long as any mood of the
weather. Bleak and changeable March will rule the year in the
intellectual heavens.

What symbol could represent this matchless embodiment of all the
activities, this tremendous success, this frenzied public interest? A
monster so large, and yet so quick,--so much bulk combined with so much
readiness,--reaching so far, and yet striking so often! Who can conceive
that productive state of mind in which some current fact is all the time
whirling the universe about it? Who can understand the mania of the
leader-writer, who never thinks of a subject without discovering the
possibility of a column concerning it,--w