tance between him and the madman in an equal state of excitement. But should this exaltation be prolonged, should the strain be too great for the mechanism, and some portion of it give way or become disturbed, then, indeed, insanity will supervene. Does this prove a necessary connection between the two? No more than the broken back of an overtasked athlete proves a necessary connection between muscular strength and decrepitude.

It will naturally occur to the reader that a notion so widely spread, and so persistently handed down from generation to generation, as the one we are here combating, must have some ground of plausibility, if not of truth. That men in all ages should have been struck with the similarity between genius and insanity, especially when the genius took the form of artistic activity, is only intelligible on the supposition of some fundamental similitude; and the answer to the question, What is that similitude? can not be uninteresting. In our opinion there can be little hesitation as to the answer. So far from believing, as M. Moreau believes, that there is an essential similarity, and that both genius and insanity are forms of the same nervous disease, we believe there is an essential distinction, one not less than between the vivacious monkey and the vivacious man. There is a resemblance, but it is simply in the excitability common to both. Instead of exclaiming

"What thin partitions do our souls divide!

Great wits to madness nearly are allied," we should assert that the partitions are party-walls; and that there is no other alliance between genius and madness than that of a common humanity, a common excitability, and a common liability to excess. If a few great men have fallen victims to the facility with which the nervous mechanism may be disturbed, men who had nothing great have likewise fallen victims by thousands. When we have gained some slight knowledge of the wondrous mechanism we name the body, how multitudinous its combined actions, how easily the disturbance of one will affect the healthy action of the rest, and how recklessly we disregard the plainest rules of health, the wonder at a few men having succumbed in the course of an intense intellectual life ceases at

won

once, and a new wonder emerges der that any man can live this life, and retain his faculties in healthy activity. The very predominance of the nervous system implies a predominant activity, and this is liable to be stimulated to excess by two potent tempters: Ambition, eager to jostle its way through energetic crowds; and Fascination, which lies in intellectual labor, the brooding storge of creation, the passionate persistence of research. These tempters hurry men into excess. Men who live much by the brain have seldom the courage to be prudent, seldom the wisdom to be patient. In vain the significant words of warning become louder and louder: in vain the head feels hot, the ears are full of noises, the heart fluttering and thumping, the nights sleepless, the digestion miserably imperfect, the temper irritable: these are Nature's warnings to desist, but they are disregarded; the object of ambition lures the victim on, the seduction of artistic creation, or of a truth seen dancing like a will-o'-wisp, incessantly solicits him; he will not pauseat length he can not pause, the excitement has become a fever, the flame that warms destroys him: madness arrives.

Sad this is, and would be infinitely sad if there were no help for it, if the very glory and splendor of the intellect were necessarily allied to its infirmity and ruin. But it is not so. Men can not transgress Nature's laws without incurring Nature's penalties. The most perfect digestive apparatus will be ruined by imprudent habits; the most powerful muscular system may be lained by over-exertion; the most admirable secreting organs will become morbid under over-stimulus; and why are we to expect the complex and delicate nervous mechanism to be overworked with impunity?

Not by reason of diseased nervous centers are men ever preeminent in intellectual energy, nor are they liable to become insane by reason of this energy, unless misdirected. They are preeminent because God has endowed them with the higher cerebral development, and because this is in healthy activity; when it falls into unhealthy activity, insanity is the result — a result not due to the original strength of the energy, but due to an original defect in the constitution transmitted from parents, or to a defect acquired through neglect of the plainest precepts of healthy living. It is from

Ghirlandajo bade his brother manage the house; for himself, he would do his utmost to find the money for it by painting. The same principle applies even to men too poor "to live like gentlemen." It is not imperative on a man to live like a gentleman; only imperative on him to live honestly. If his genius will not procure him the 66 common necessaries," (which too often include a host of superfluities, and sacrifices to mere show,) let him earn those necessaries by some other labor, like other men. Spinoza lived by polishing glasses; and small as the pittance was which this secured him, it was enough for his necessities, and it preserved his independence. When a pension was offered to him if he would dedicate his work to Louis XIV., he declined, "having no intention of delicating any thing to that monarch." It was ascertained after his death that he had sometimes lived on twopence halfpenny a day. This was interpreting the necessities very rigidly; and although it is highly probable that had he been an Englishman his "position in society" would not have been very brilliant on those terms, it is certain that he would have troubled himself little about his position in society, finding in philosophy enough to satisfy his soul.

Goldsmith and Johnson are two instructive illustrations of our argument. Goldsmith had more of what is especially called genius than Johnson had; but will any one assert that it was by reason of this advantage that he was so careless of engagements, and so heedless in money matters? will any one assert that Johnson's noble integrity was owing to his intellectual inferiority? The impulsive, hopeful, childlike nature of Goldsmith, makes us love the man, and easily forgive his errors; we know that there was nothing base in him, only a weakness to which we can be charitable; but let us not forget that his errors sprang from his weakness, and were in no sense the neces

sary consequence of his strength. Neither let us suffer logic to stifle charity; nor let charity confuse our moral judgments. It is not because we see a course of conduct to be sinful that we are to shut the sinner from our hearts; nor because we feel yearnings of pity for the erring, that we are to alter our judgment of the error.

Men of genius are said to be by nature improvident. It may be so: biography too often seems to say it is so. But thousands who have no genius are quite as improvident; and it is never in virtue of his genius that any man is so. Human nature is human nature, and its infirmities may be seen in the shade of its splendors, but they are not owing to the splendors. The great Shakspeare, the great Newton, the great Goethe, were not little men be cause they too had their littlenesses; nor were these littlenesses in any sense the product of their greatness. And if the trembling sensibility, which is one of the conditions of genius, makes a man more accessible to certain temptations, it makes him also more accessible to moral influences, so that, in point of fact, the history of men of genius is on the whole remarkably noble and pure. The curiosity naturally felt about every thing concerning men of genius leads to the publication of all their errors and shortcomings; but who can doubt that a similar scrutiny of the lives of grocers would yield a much blacker catalogue of errors? The vices of illustrious men are cried out from the house-tops, but who troubles himself about the vices of blockheads?

Our conclusion, then, is briefly this: Genius is health and strength, not disease and weakness; it is sanity and virtue, not insanity and vice. The man of genius may be sickly and vicious; but he is so by reason of a sickly body and a vacillating will; not by any means because, with this body and this will, he also possesses a splendid intellect.