It is no longer
possible for a true poet to sing of sensual delights; the man he creates
is now no more the slave "of low ambition or distempered love." His
theme is rather--

"No other than the heart of man
As found among the best of those who live,
Not unexalted by religious faith,
Nor uninformed by books, good books, though few,
In Nature's presence."

Writing is as great an aid to the cultivation of the mind as reading. It
is indeed indispensable, and the accuracy of thought and expression of
which Bacon speaks, is but one of its good results. "By writing," says
Saint Augustine, "I have learned many things which nothing else had
taught me." There is, of course, no question here of writing for
publication. To do this no one should be urged. The farther we are from
all thought of readers, the nearer are we to truth; and once an author
has published, a sort of madness comes over him, and he seems to be
doing nothing unless he continue to publish. The truly intellectual man
leads an interior life; he dwells habitually in the presence of God, of
Nature, and of his own soul; he swims in a current of ideas, looks out
upon a world of truth and beauty; he would rather gain some new vision
of the eternal reality than to have a mountain of gold or the suffrages
of a whole people. The great hindrance is lack of the power of
prolonged attention, of sustained thought; and this the habit of
serious writing gives. But the habit itself is difficult to acquire. At
first in attempting to write we are discouraged to find how crude, how
unreal, how little within our control our knowledge is; and it will
often happen that we shall simply hold the pen in idleness, either
because we find nothing to write, or because the proper way to express
what we think eludes our efforts. When this happens day after day, the
temptation will come to abandon our purpose, and to seek easier and less
effective means of developing mental strength, or else we shall write
carelessly and without thought, which is even a greater evil than not to
write at all. In the writing of which I am thinking there is no question
of style, of what critics and readers will say; all that is asked is
that we apply our minds to things as they appear to us, and put in plain
words what we see. Thus our style will become the expression of our
thought and life. It will be the outgrowth of a natural method, and
consequently will have genuine worth. What is