r children, had imbued with the
confidence of genius and strong desire of fame, but has favored with no
corresponding power; and others, whose lofty gifts were unaccompanied
with the faculty of expression, or any of that earthly machinery by
which ethereal endowments must be manifested to mankind. All these,
therefore, are melancholy laughing-stocks. Next, here are honest and
well intentioned persons, who by a want of tact--by inaccurate
perceptions--by a distorting imagination--have been kept continually at
cross purposes with the world and bewildered upon the path of life. Let
us see if they can confine themselves within the line of our
procession. In this class, likewise, we must assign places to those who
have encountered that worst of ill success, a higher fortune than their
abilities could vindicate; writers, actors, painters, the pets of a
day, but whose laurels wither unrenewed amid their hoary hair;
politicians, whom some malicious contingency of affairs has thrust into
conspicuous station, where, while the world stands gazing at them, the
dreary consciousness of imbecility makes them curse their birth hour.
To such men, we give for a companion him whose rare talents, which
perhaps require a Revolution for their exercise, are buried in the tomb
of sluggish circumstances.

Not far from these, we must find room for one whose success has been of
the wrong kind; the man who should have lingered in the cloisters of a
university, digging new treasures out of the Herculaneum of antique
lore, diffusing depth and accuracy of literature throughout his
country, and thus making for himself a great and quiet fame. But the
outward tendencies around him have proved too powerful for his inward
nature, and have drawn him into the arena of political tumult, there to
contend at disadvantage, whether front to front, or side by side, with
the brawny giants of actual life. He becomes, it may be, a name for
brawling parties to bandy to and fro, a legislator of the Union; a
governor of his native state; an ambassador to the courts of kings or
queens; and the world may deem him a man of happy stars. But not so the
wise; and not so himself, when he looks through his experience, and
sighs to miss that fitness, the one invaluable touch which makes all
things true and real. So much achieved, yet how abortive is his life!
Whom shall we choose for his companion? Some weak framed blacksmith,
perhaps, whose delicacy of muscle might have suited