ence they have in the sterling value of their
several doings. Conceit may puff a man up, but never prop him up; and
there is too visible distress and hopelessness in men's aspects to admit
of the supposition that they have any stable support of faith in
themselves.

I have stated these principles generally, because there is no branch of
labor to which they do not apply: But there is one in which our
ignorance or forgetfulness of them has caused an incalculable amount of
suffering: and I would endeavor now to reconsider them with especial
reference to it,--the branch of the Arts.

In general, the men who are employed in the Arts have freely chosen
their profession, and suppose themselves to have special faculty for it;
yet, as a body, they are not happy men. For which this seems to me the
reason, that they are expected, and themselves expect, to make their
bread _by being clever_--not by steady or quiet work; and are,
therefore, for the most part, trying to be clever, and so living in an
utterly false state of mind and action.

This is the case, to the same extent, in no other profession or
employment. A lawyer may indeed suspect that, unless he has more wit
than those around him, he is not likely to advance in his profession;
but he will not be always thinking how he is to display his wit. He will
generally understand, early in his career, that wit must be left to take
care of itself, and that it is hard knowledge of law and vigorous
examination and collation of the facts of every case entrusted to him,
which his clients will mainly demand; this it is which he has to be paid
for; and this is healthy and measurable labor, payable by the hour. If
he happen to have keen natural perception and quick wit, these will come
into play in their due time and place, but he will not think of them as
his chief power; and if he have them not, he may still hope that
industry and conscientiousness may enable him to rise in his profession
without them. Again in the case of clergymen: that they are sorely
tempted to display their eloquence or wit, none who know their own
hearts will deny, but then they _know_ this to _be_ a temptation: they
never would suppose that cleverness was all that was to be expected from
them, or would sit down deliberately to write a clever sermon: even the
dullest or vainest of them would throw some veil over their vanity, and
pretend to some profitableness of purpose in what they did. They would
not openly a