MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN,

      Members of the Union Literary Society of Miami University:--

      SOON as I had obtained my own consent to appear before you on the present occasion, in pursuance of the very polite and flattering invitation I had received from you, I immediately laid all my powers of invention under tribute to furnish a subject worthy of your attention. But, to my great disappointment, I never knew them pay any tax imposed upon them with so much reluctance. Weeks passed away before I could even fix upon any topic; and after I had resolved upon one, new, unexpected and inexorable calls upon my time and labor, so crowded upon me as to leave but a few fragments to devote to a subject which, in my humble opinion, deserves a year rather than a few hours, and a volume rather than a single address.

      Accustomed only to read what is written, or to speak extemporaneously, and not at all to recite from memory, I have sketched a few thoughts upon the RESPONSIBILITIES OF MEN OF GENIUS; which, without further introduction or apology, I now submit to your most kind and candid consideration.

      Human responsibility, gentlemen, is a momentous theme, and of transcendent importance to the world. In the amplitude of its comprehension it contemplates man in every power and capacity of his nature, and in all the conditions of his existence. It views him in all his relations to that mysterious and incomprehensible whole, of which he is so important a part, indicated by the all-engrossing terms of Creator and creature. A complete and perfect knowledge of the subject, were it made dependent upon our own exertions, would require an intimate and perfect acquaintance with the universe, But in this it may [73] be said to correspond with every other subject of thought; as no one ever vet understood an atom of the universe who did not understand it all. We are not, however, made dependent for the science of our duty upon our ability to acquire a knowledge that is wholly unattainable. The divine precept happily comes to our relief, and rescues man from a difficulty absolutely insurmountable.

      Men, indeed, are not generally satisfied with a clear, broad precept. They are curious to know the reason why it is so commanded. This they have not, in any case, perfectly succeeded in ascertaining; and, in most instances, never can. Still it is some satisfaction to know any of the reasons, and to comprehend the more immediate causes of things, involving either duty or happiness. Hence the pleasure felt in an excursion into the regions of fancy and abstract speculation, even on the most familiar subjects. There is sometimes a very great satisfaction in discovering an end of all human attainments, and in perceiving that there is a fixed goal beyond which even imagination itself cannot stretch its wings.

      Still reason has something to do with the ascertainment and comprehension of human responsibility; and it is important just to know how much lies within its lawful precincts, and what lies beyond them. But even this view of the subject is too large for the present occasion; and we have therefore confined our efforts to a single branch of the mighty theme--viz. the responsibilities of men of genius.

      I do not, however, expect to escape the difficulties which lie upon the whole subject of human responsibility, by asking your special attention to a single branch of it. This special department cannot, indeed, be considered without a general view of the whole subject. We must have just, if not adequate, conceptions of the responsibilities of man, before we can form a correct estimate of the responsibilities of a particular class of men. But as it is my aim to give a proper direction, if need be, to a particular class of mind, I prefer to solicit your attention, gentlemen, to this very prominent branch of the great subject.

      And, in the first place, it would, in accordance with well-established usage, seem to be incumbent on me to define a man of genius, as well as our acceptation of the term responsibility. When not in a very great haste to arrive at a given point, or when in quest of entertainment as well as of business, I sometimes indulge in a circuitous rather than in a direct approach to the precise point in hand.

      Allow me, then, to remark that the development of genius as well as of responsibility, has much to do with the proper comprehension of that most mysterious and sublime something called mind. I speak not [74] of its essence. The whole doctrine of essences, whether of mind or of matter, is contraband in every province of legitimate philosophy. No sane person, trained in the schools of useful learning, in this our age of reason, presumes to scan any essence or quintessence whatever. The doctrine of the fifth essence is now-a-days not more ridiculous than the doctrine of the first essence. If at any time we should be seized with a fit of the Muses, we might with Milton sing of

Or, if wrapt in the visions of an hypothetical philosophy, we might, with the genius of Stagyra, speculate upon "the quintessential purity of a heavenly body immutable." But this matter-of-fact inductive age disdains such idle dreams, and repudiates the ideas and almost the name of essence and of quintessence, with all the retinue of imaginative properties, accidents and ends. The rigid Baconians, to a man, are willing to acknowledge that there are three topics, once the darling themes of all the sons of hypothesis, which now lie beyond the limits of true philosophy. These are the origin, the essence and the end of any thing, mental or material.

      The phenomena of mind and of matter come honorably and fairly within the empire of observation and of reason. Many of their attributes we can and do apprehend, while their essences will forever remain a terra incognita--a subject so metaphysically abstruse that no mind can grasp it in any one of its predicaments. The mind, indeed, may seize any thing as gross as ether, or the subtle fluids that roll their invisible currents through the channels of a vein infinitely minute; but the sanctum sanctorum of its own awful residence is not to be approached, much less entered, by the ablest, the most profound and erudite of human kind. Its capacity and elasticity are, indeed, appreciable by those who attentively consider its operations. It grasps a universe, and yet may be filled with a single idea. Like the human eye, at one time it seizes a hemisphere, and at another it sees only a single animalcule. Its spirituality is demonstrated by the celerity and compass of its movements. When we spread out upon the largest canvas which the most vigorous imagination has stretched, a universe composed of one hundred millions of suns and two thousand millions of attending planets, moving in orbits wide as those that fill the area of our solar system, the mind finds no difficulty in sweeping the uttermost circle of such a universe, and of still ranging through fields of space far beyond its precincts, from which subtracted, the existing universe would seem to be but an atom. [75]

      But the celerity of its movement is no less wonderful than the almost illimitable extent of its comprehension. Light itself, that bounds eight millions of miles in a minute, moves as the sloth, "compared with the speed of its flight." Infinite duration and boundless space are the immense fields through which it gambols with ineffable pleasure. Nor do the unapproachable heights or the unfathomable depths of nature lie beyond its sublime aspirations. These indeed, though beyond an angel's ken and its own comprehension, are nevertheless the only areas that seem to afford it room to spend its mighty energies, or fatigue itself in impetuous sallies.

      That Pagan philosophers should have regarded the human mind as an emanation from the Supreme Divinity, is by no means an irrational or absurd hypothesis; yet it is an undefined and undefinable speculation, and explains not at all the mysteries of its awful existence. It is a creature, and therefore no part of the Creator; and it is a creature of every day's manifestation. Like sparks stricken off from Nature's eternal and unwasting Sun, there are every moment myriads of them ushering into existence, commencing a career boundless as space and lasting as the years of eternity.

      While the realms of matter have all been filled up and peopled with their appropriate orbs, so that no new star has been born since the first Sabbath, nor a single new atom added to the masses of the original creation, during the progress of all the ages of time, mind is constantly springing into existence, but never going out; so that the machinery of nature seems to be but one grand laboratory for the continuance, production and manifestation of these new creations; while all its vast dominions seem to constitute but one splendid and magnificent theatre on which individual minds are to be the eternal actors.

      Creation, gentlemen, is a very grand and sublime subject. It had its beginning, but where shall it end? In its alphabet it has no omega, and within its vocabulary the word annihilation is not found. It is matter first, and mind second; and these combined constitute all its wonders. Now, as the forms of matter are exceedingly variant and numerous, what shall we think of the mysterious and multiform diversities of mind and character! Of these developments one there is to which the ancients have consecrated the name genius; and it is to this manifestation of mind your attention is now specially solicited.

      What then, gentlemen, mean we by the word genius? Shall we regard it as a supernal spirit suddenly inspired, or a guardian angel allotted to a good or great man? This family of genii, it would seem, is now extinct. Once, indeed, it was a large and powerful family, and [76] of illustrious fame; but, like other great families, it had its own feuds and broils. Two parties were formed, each calling itself the good genii and the other the evil genii. A furious war arose between them; and, after a hundred battles, they agreed to divide between themselves the empire of the world--allotting to every individual a guardian genius, good or evil, as he desired or deserved. But, like other mystic agents, they have gone the way of all fictions, and now gently repose in the bosom of oblivion.

      Since that time the etymology of the name has been the amusement of the critics. Some would have it, and the word giant, of kindred Grecian extraction, because both alleged to be the offspring of gignomai, regularly descended from the venerable Geno, alias Geino, of prolific memory. From denoting a sort of sub-divinity, it thus became the representative of a highly gifted man. But, as gigno, one of its ancestors, means to beget, it rather indicates one class of great men, of which there are, at least, two illustrious categories--the great in reason, and the great in fancy. Conception and comparison distinguish the former--imagination and invention the latter. These are the men of genius--those the men of talents. Men of genius soar on eagles' pinions to worlds of fancy; while men of talents, Atlas-like, stand under the real world. The loftier regions of fiction and romance delight the former, while the realities of earth and its mighty destinies engross the attention and command the energies of the latter. Men of genius create new worlds--men of talents carry them. Strength (for so talentum, from talao, would seem to indicate) characterizes the one; while activity and celerity of movement distinguish the operations of the other. While, then, invention is the boast of genius, execution is the glory of talent. Combined, they make earth's great ones; and, leagued with virtue, constitute the real nobility of human nature.

      Example, however, is always more intelligible, and generally more eloquent, than definition. We shall, then, summon its aid. Genius, we have said, is distinguished by invention, creation, origination; talent by effort, enterprise and great achievements. Energy is prime minister to talent; the love of admiration, to genius.

      Homer excelled in genius; Virgil in talent; Shakspeare and Milton in both. In the fine arts of painting, sculpture and music, as well as in poetry, oratory, and even in the useful arts, that have contributed to the progress of civilization and comfort, we have numerous happy illustrations of both genius and talent. Raphael in his cartoons, Michael Angelo in his frescoes, and our own Benjamin West in his historic paintings, are, par excellence, models of genius in the department of [77] painting. In sculpture, Phidias, Praxiteles and Polydore are as bright a constellation of genius as Demosthenes, Cicero or Sheridan, in oratory; or as Milton, Pope or Byron, in poetry. In the useful arts a Fulton and an Arkwright afford as fine specimens of genius as a Mozart in music, or a Scott in romance. On the other hand, we discover in a Butler, a Luther, a Franklin, a Washington, the mighty power of talent; and in a Locke, a Bacon or a Newton, the still superior force of genius and talent combined.

      Before dismissing the definition of a man of genius, it deserves to be noted that in the question of responsibility we give precedence to genius, not in contrast with talent, but because a man of genius is always more or less possessed of talent; whereas a man of talent is not necessarily a man of genius. Genius, then, in this view, comprehends talent; while talent does not necessarily comprehend genius.

      It is now expedient that we advance more into the interior of our subject, and endeavor to form some conception of the term responsibility.

      The doctrine of responsibility is the doctrine of moral relations between an inferior and a superior--between a dependent and an independent being; as well as between such co-ordinates as enter into any social compact implying or involving obligations to each other. It is, therefore, a doctrine of paramount importance, in the social system, to every individual member of it. It is, indeed, the doctrine of human destiny, involving the whole subject of human happiness and human misery.

      As there is not one lawless atom in the material universe, so there is not one irresponsible agent in the social system. The order of material nature is, indeed, the outward symbol of the order of spiritual nature, and that is the order of obedient dependence. We shall, then, enter the holy place of moral obligation by passing leisurely through the outer court of physical obligation.

      In the material universe all the inferior masses are under law to the superior. One of the sublime designs of the Creator is, that all the central masses of the universe shall not only be the largest masses in their respective systems, but also radiating centres to their systems. Thus lie has constituted the great masses perennial fountains of beneficence to all the subordinate masses that move round them. Our own bright orb, representative of all the suns of creation, is an unwasting fountain of life to its own glorious system. No sooner does he show his radiant face than floods of life teem from his bosom upon some thirty attendant planets, which, in sublime majesty and in expressive [78] silence, ceaseless move around him. Light, heat, life and joy emanate from him. These are the sensible demonstrations of his bounty to his waiting retinue of worlds. What other emanations of goodness he vouchsafes to those who obey him are yet unknown, and perhaps unknowable to us while confined to this our native planet. In the purer and more elevated regions of ether he may perhaps generate and mature the ultimate and more recondite elements of the vital principle, which, combining with our atmosphere, quicken it with all the rudimental principles of animal existence.

      In the realms of matter, so far as fact, observation and analogy authenticate any conclusion, the law is universal, viz. that the minors must be subject to the majors; that the inferior masses shall depend on the superior for all that gives them life and comfort. But that the satellites of all systems and of all ranks requite their suns in some way by receiving from them their beneficence, and thereby maintaining, through their respective gravities, their central positions and perpetual quiescence, while that' all move forward in one grand concert around the throne of the Eternal, in awful grandeur musing his praise, is not to be questioned or doubted by any one conversant with God's grand system of designs. On these sublime though simple principles are suspended the order, beauty and felicity of the universe. Destroy this, and a scene of disorder, confusion and destruction would instantly ensue, that would not leave an atom of the universe unscathed.

      Such is also the order of the intellectual system. One great mind, nature's spiritual and eternal sun, constitutes the mighty centre around which, in their respective orbits, all pure minds, primary or secondary--angelic or human--revolve. In this system the great minds as certainly govern the inferior, as in material nature the large masses govern the less. Now, as the power of mind consists in intelligence, educated mind must as certainly govern uneducated mind, and the more vigorous and talented the less favored, as the great material masses govern the inferior.

      Some, indeed, argue that all power is in mind, and that volition is the cause of all motion. Phrenologists, moreover, depose that there is no organ for the will. Hence volition is the mind moving in a certain direction. It is the whole mind in action to effect a change in some person or thing. Hence all changes, all motions in the universe, are but the volitions of an intelligent agent. So God willed light; and his fiat, or will expressed in words, gave it being. And as the same volition, guided by intelligence, that created the masses, still upholds them in being and directs all their movements, may we not affirm that [79] intelligence governs the universe? Educated mind, or intelligence, is, then, the supreme power in every department of nature. Hence, men of genius must always, every thing else being equal, direct and govern those not so highly gifted as themselves. May we not then conclude that it is Heaven's own law that superior minds must always govern the inferior?

      But this reasoning supposes mental inequalities; and who believes that all men (i. e. all minds) are equal., either by nature, education or art? If the sun and planets were all equal, the material universe would stand still. If all minds were equal, there would be no government in the world. But it might need none. If so, however, it certainly could not move. The sun never would set in one half of the world, and consequently never rise in the other, if it depended on human volition, and if one half of the world had just as much power as the other half.

      The beauty as well as the happiness of the universe requires inequality. Equal lines, smooth surfaces and eternal plains have no beauty. We must have hill and dale, mountain and valley, sea and land, suns of all magnitudes, worlds of all sizes, minds of all dimensions, and persons and faces of divers casts and colors, to constitute a beautiful and happy world. We must have sexes, conditions and circumstances--empires, nations and families--diversities in person, mind, manners, in order to the communication and reception of happiness. Hence, our numerous and various wants are not only incentives to action, but sources of pleasure, both simple and complex--physical, intellectual and moral.

      Hence the foundation and the philosophy of unequal minds--unequal in power, in capacity and in taste--unequal in intelligence, activity and energy. The inequalities of mind are numerous and various as the inequalities of matter. One mind sports with worlds--another, with atoms. One man perches himself on Mount Chimborazo and communes with the stars--another delves into the earth in search of hidden treasures, and buries himself in mines and minerals. One man moves along with the tardiness of the ox in the drudgery of life--another ascends in a balloon and soars above the clouds. Here we find a Newton measuring the comet's path, a Franklin stealing fire from heaven, a Columbus in search of a new world; and there a sportsman with his hounds in quest of a fox. One delights in his revelling and song, in riotous living and the giddy dance--another, in locking up his golden pelf in an iron chest. Talk we, then, of minds equally endowed by nature or improved by art! No such minds ever [80] composed any community. Varieties, all manner of varieties, are essential to society. The world needs the rich and the poor--the young and the aged--the learned and the unlearned--the healthy and the infirm--the cheerful and the melancholic. These call forth all our energies, open channels for all the social virtues, lay the basis of our various responsibilities, and constitute much of the happiness of this life. They furnish opportunities for communicating and receiving benefits.

      The positive and the negative belong as much to society as to electricity. These relative states belong to all earth's categories. Some are positive, and some negative, in health, wealth, genius, learning, cheerfulness, contentment; the one imparts, and the other receives, blessings, and thus the circle of social happiness is completed.

      But the world that now is, in more senses than one, is the offspring of a world that once was. We have derived more than our flesh, blood end bones from our ancestors. We speak their language, read their books, learn their customs, imbibe their spirit, copy their manners, and are the complex result of all their institutions. Our language, religion and morality, are alike hereditary. We shall just as soon invent a new language as a new religion, objectively considered. Of all creatures, man is the most imitative. His whole person, head, face and hands, body, soul and spirit, are, more or less, shaped through the influence of this mysterious law of transformation. We do not only speak the language of our own country, but the provincialisms of our nurseries. The gift of all tongues did not, because it could not, annul the Galilean brogue. Nor does the casual interchange of nations deface the national head, form of person, or gait, of early education and youthful association.

      Need we further proof that men are, to an extent involving all their essential interests, subject to the law of imitation, and, consequently, example and precept are the two grand formative influences of human destiny? From this point, then, we may look more earnestly, as well as more intelligently, on the whole subject of human responsibilities. If, indeed, as could be clearly shown, it is most certain that the physical, intellectual and moral constitution of one generation essentially depends upon the intelligence, religion and morality of its immediate predecessor; and if parents, teachers, and men of more advanced age, unavoidably impress their image on those brought into life, and up to manhood, under their influence; follows it not, that men of transcendent genius have a mighty influence, and are awfully responsible to God for the application of that intellect and influence delegated to them? [81] It is a startling proposition, that a truly intelligent and religious community could, according to the laws of our own being, gradually introduce a more vigorous, long-living, intellectual and moral population, than is possible to any ignorant and immoral people in existence; yet it is not more startling than true.

      But let us, for the sake both of argument and illustration, look for a moment at some of the men of genius that have lived in the world. A mere specimen or two of those of the last and present century must, for the present, suffice.

      In works of genius and general literature, no writer of the eighteenth century obtained a higher conspicuity or a greater celebrity than Voltaire. Distinguished from infancy with superior intellectual endowments, a sprightly imagination, great versatility of genius, a ready and sparkling wit; he is said to have written poetry while yet in his cradle. When passing through the College of Louis the Great, comet-like, he dazzled with the lustre of his genius, and the brilliancy of his path, not only his fellow-students, but all the great masters of science and literature which then adorned that royal college. In admiration of his powerful intellect, and captivating eloquence, and in anticipation of his future greatness, Ninon de l'Enclos bequeathed to him two thousand livres to purchase a library.

      The vivacity of his wit and humor, as well as his devotion to the muses, early drew him away from the study of the law, gave him a passport to the society of men of learning, and introduced him to the courtiers of Louis XIV. Even in his youth he became a favorite both of the tragic and of the comic muse. He successively shone, a star of the first magnitude, amongst the courtiers of St. Cloud, St. James and those of Berlin. His ascendency over the French king, over George I. and his queen Caroline, and afterwards, over the Prussian monarch, from whom he received a pension of two-and twenty thousand livres, are to be regarded as the trophies of his genius; as monuments of his extraordinary endowments.

      In proof of his powers of satire, and that against the government too, the Bastille was honored with his company for one whole year. And had it not been for the admiration of his Oedipus, the first-fruits of his tragic muse, on the part of the Duke of Orleans, he might, have been doomed to a longer imprisonment. This admonition did not long restrain the impetuosity of his mind, its recklessness of the moral consequences of its career. His Lettres Philosophiques, so profane and dissolute in their witticism, soon obtained the honor of a public conflagration at the hand of the public hangman, and that, too, by [82] order of the Parliament of France. Despite of all these marks of public displeasure, by the singular merits of his Mahomed, Merope and Alzire, he obtained the honor of the first dramatic poet of the age, and was again introduced to the Court of France, as the peculiar favorite of Madame de Pompadour.

      His other works, published while in Geneva, at Ferney and at Paris, both comic and tragic, both philosophical and literary, gave him a very high rank amongst the men of literature and of taste; so that in the esteem of admiring myriads, he commanded the homage and guided the taste of the literati of the whole French Empire, during the last half of the eighteenth century. While at Ferney, in the midst of his little colony of artisans, abounding in wealth, and rich in fame, he was not only in the continual receipt of the adulations of philosophers and princes, but also of princely presents, and liberal gifts from some of the sovereigns of Europe. Dissatisfied with these rewards of his genius and labors, and wearied with the luxurious ease of that delightful abode, he languished for the daily incense of praise, and the admiring plaudits of the French capital. Even in his gray hairs, and at the advanced period of fourscore and four years, he returned to the metropolis, as he said, " to seek glory and death." Honors extraordinary were crowded thick upon him on his arrival in Paris. The learned critics emulated each other in the despatch with which they offered incense at his shrine; and, finally, he was crowned with the poetic wreath in a full theatre, amidst applauding thousands. The excitement, however, was too powerful for his enfeebled constitution. The weight of so many honors oppressed him. The complimentary visits of Parisian ceremony stole away sleep from his pillow, and compelled him to resort to opium for relief; one large dose of which finally took away his senses, and immediately despatched him from the worship of infidels to the presence of his God.

      Thus perished this extraordinary genius; the founder of a new sect of philosophers, distinguished more for their wit and their licentiousness, than for the profundity of their science or their influence in the cause of civilization. Thus perished the author of seventy-one octavo volumes, not one of which was seasoned with one pure emotion, with a single tribute to religion or pure morality; all of them, however, characterized by a great versatility of genius, a glowing imagination, a peculiar ease and fluency of style, and for a great variety of knowledge, such as it is; much of it, indeed, incorrect, little of it useful, and all of it poisoned with the seeds of anarchy, libertinism and [83] irreligion. Thus perished the fickle-minded, wavering and inconstant Voltaire, who, as some one has justly said, was a free-thinker in London, a courtesan at Versailles, a Christian at Nantz and an infidel at Berlin. Assuming at one time to be a moralist, pleading for toleration, and dissuading from war; at another, acting the buffoon; now writing a tragedy, then a farce; to day a philosopher, cold as Diogenes; to-morrow an enthusiast, ardent as Peter the Hermit; to-day a parasite, fulsome as Tertullus; to-morrow a satirist, severe as Juvenal; now a voluptuary, feasting in princely style, again a miserable ascetic, worshipping mammon; now as modest as a sage, anon as bold as an atheist, denouncing the Messiah, and contemning the hope of immortality.

      Such was the man whose anarchical theories, whose polished libertinism, whose atheistic reasonings, more than those of any other, polluted almost all the illustrious youth of France during the reigns of Louis XV. and XVI. Such was the master-spirit of the master-spirits of the French Revolution;--that reign of terror whose infamous annals are destined to demonstrate to the human race the madness of atheism, the weakness of philosophy, the desolating tumults of passion, and the necessity of religion and righteousness to the prosperity, the honor and the happiness of every nation and people.

      But on what canvas can be grouped, and by what historic pencil sketched, the ruined myriads, deluded, polluted and destroyed, by the conversation, writings and examples, of such a genius as that of Voltaire, Volney, Diderot, or that of our own less gifted, but equally morally distempered and licentious, Paine? His "Common Sense," and his "Rights of Man," are but the charm through which he fascinated and beguiled untold thousands into the downward paths of ruin and disgrace;--temporal, spiritual and eternal. He, too, was but the deluded votary of a more gifted and still more depraved genius.

      And who were the Dantons, the Marats; the Robespierres, of the age of despotism, the triumph of anarchy? Men of the school of Voltaire, Diderot and Gabriel Mirabeau. It will remain a secret to the development of the Great Day, how much poison has been infused into society through the intoxicating cup of a false, though fascinating philosophy, sparkling with the brilliant display of elevated genius, administered by such men as the speculative Hume, the eloquent Gibbon or the accomplished Rousseau.

      Our two great historians, before they commenced their proud monuments of elevated genius, had travelled through France; and one of [84] them both wrote and spoke the language of Voltaire as fluently and as eloquently as his own vernacular. These men, had themselves drunk deeply of the continental philosophy--had become too familiar with the licentious principles of the eighteenth century. The first impulse to delineate the fortunes of England seems to have sprung up in the bosom of a skeptic, who had first conceived a false theory of the genius of human nature, and afterwards sought, in the annals of his country, facts to prove it. Such, it appears, was the character of David Hume. Destined to the law by his parents, "he preferred Virgil and Cicero to Voet and Vinnius," while his taste for philosophy led him to write an "Inquiry into the Principle of Morals," a "Treatise on Human Nature," and an essay on "Natural Religion," before he completed a single volume of his history of England. A man of distinguished talents, and an elegant historian, he certainly is; but the spirit and tendency of his writings are most clearly, though most insidiously, irreligious and immoral. His sentiments are often clothed in equivocal and fallacious language, and are intended indirectly to sap and mine the influence of the Bible. With all "the careless inimitable beauties of Hume," as Gibbon calls them--i. e. "his solecisms, his scotticisms, his gallicisms, his violations of the rules of English grammar," severely exposed by Dr. Priestley in his philosophical disquisitions, he is still, in language and style, the beau ideal of all English historians. But this is a small matter compared with the sly narcotic poison of his infidelity; which has, in truth, perverted the facts of his history, and rendered it rather a panegyric of skepticism than a faithful record of facts. Like Voltaire, as one of our late reviewers has said, "Hume adopted history as the vehicle of opinions which he could make palatable to the million in no other way." His suppressio veri, and his suggestio falsi, have beguiled other writers into very great errors, distortions and suppressions of fact. Keightley, in his "Outlines of History," Gleig, in his "Family History," and even Mrs. Markham, in her history, so admirably adapted, in many respects, to children, have been imposed on by Hume; and that, too, when his infidelity perverted his genius, and discolored the facts which lay before him in the annals of the world. All this, and perhaps more, might be said of the still more highly endowed and more eloquently accomplished author of the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire."

      Gifted by nature, and adorned by art, no historian either in our language or in any other known to us, possessed a much more fascinating style of narration than Edmund Gibbon. If, indeed, second [85] to any English historian, he is Second only to the more learned and polished Robertson; not, indeed, in the rich easy and flowing eloquence of his splendid periods, but in the more sublime, more chaste, nervous and classic character of his general style and manner. But the subtle poison of an insidious skepticism is infused into the whole performance; and ere the youthful reader is aware of it, he is beguiled into an indefinable incertitude and dubiety on the whole subject of historical veracity, and charmed into an unutterable suspicion that Christianity and polytheism are but modifications of the same superstitious credulity of poor human nature.

      I presume not to descant upon the history of those mighty chiefs--the men of high renown--whose genius, like that of Byron, or that of Napoleon, have been the subject of a thousand comments--orations--eulogies. Those rare prodigies, like comets of stupendous magnitude, seldom appear in our own horizon, and when they do, are so far beyond the aspiration of our youth as to afford no very strong incentive to their ambition. As those burning mountains of lofty summit, seldom trodden by human foot, need no parapet to prevent the too near approach of the unwary traveller, so these giants of enormous stature are placed so far above all aspiration, as not to seduce by their example one in a hundred millions of our race. Still their history is a part of the history of humanity, and, as such, is not without its use. Their towering ambition, transcendent success and tragic end, together with the tendency of their course, are beacons, not without a moral influence to the human mind. The evils they have done while they lived, and the evils they are still doing, and yet to do, cannot be easily computed.

      The good or evil that men do while they live, lives after them; neither the one nor the other is "always interred with their bones." Their example lives, and in the long series of cause and effect, it the complex and mysterious concatenation of things, their actions are pregnant with effects on human destiny that whole centuries do not always either unfold or annihilate.

      Can any one compute the expenditures of human life, the number, of widows, orphans and bereaved parents, occasioned by the insatiate ambition of the late Emperor of the French? What tears and groans and agonies, did each of his hundred battles cost the nations in which he sought that harvest of renown, which, for a few years, he reaped in the admiration of the world! But who can fix, either in time or place, the last effect which his wild career of glory shall have entailed upon the human race? [86]

      But it is not the military chiefs, the ambitious aspirants after civil or military renown, with whom we have to do. A Voltaire, a Paine, a Byron or a Scott come more legitimately within the precincts of our subject. These all were men of high responsibilities, because of the greatness of their talents, their lofty genius, their rare attainments. But whither tended the labors of their lives? Of the two former, but one opinion obtains amongst all Christians--their whole influence was decisively against religion, morality and good government. The French Revolution is a lesson known to all men, demonstrating the indissoluble connection between atheism, anarchy and misrule. It was as certainly the offspring of atheism, as the Spanish Inquisition was the child of the Papacy, or the temple of Jupiter Olympus the creation of Paganism.

      Men reason against both common sense and philosophy, when they argue either themselves or others into the hallucination, that a good civil government can anywhere exist without sound religion and sound morality; or, indeed, that a people can be moral, in the proper sense of the word, without religion. Without temples, altars, priests and religion by civil law established, they may, indeed, be intelligent, religious, moral, and, consequently, prosperous; but without true religion no state can be moral, prosperous and permanent. All empires that have fallen, all states and nations that have passed away, have perished through irreligion, immorality and vice.

      Now, as the master-spirits of the French Revolution were the disciples of Voltaire and his associates, we read the power, the character and the tendency of their genius and talent in that momentous event, prolific of instruction, not only to the living, but to ages yet unborn. If England in the days of her Commonwealth was a proof of the genius of her Cromwell, or if the riches and glory of Israel, at the era of the erection of their temple, constituted a proof of the wisdom and sound policy of their Solomon, so was France in the days of her Pantheon, during the tyranny of her Danton, Robespierre, Marat, &c., a proof of the philosophy, policy and virtues of her Voltaire, Volney and Gabriel Mirabeau.

      But why, it may be asked, mention in the same chapter such men as Byron, Burns and Scott? This, indeed, demands an explanation. They are not, then, at all to be classed with such men as Voltaire, Volney or Mirabeau, except as men of genius and favorites of public fame. Still the influence of a Byron, a Burns, a Scott, may be as greatly mischievous as their genius was transcendently great and admirable. That they have all said many beautiful things--that they [87] have expressed the purest and the noblest sentiments and views in the finest style, in language the most chaste, the most classic and the most exuberantly rich and fascinating, is admitted, with the greatest pride of English literature and of Englishmen. That much of their poetry and fiction is deeply imbued with sentiments of piety and humanity, is also most cheerfully conceded; and that most men may improve their language, their taste and their style by the perusal and the study of their admirable productions, we also admit. And if any one please to add, that three such men almost contemporaneous have not adorned any nation, ancient or modern, with richer specimens of rare genius of the finest texture and the most exuberant growth, I will not at all dissent from him; and yet I must say, that in view of the tendency, the whole tendency of the products of their genius, and in my estimate of human responsibility, I would not, for "all that wealth or fame e'er gave," be the author of their works. I cannot but view them as decidedly tending to impiety, and consequently to immorality. They may not, indeed, Bulwer-like, have made the libertine a successful adventurer, or the licentious rake a man of honor and of good fortune. They may not have decorated vice with the charms of innocence, or thrown around the sensualist the robes of virtue; they may not have commended to juvenile fancy a plausible prodigal, or introduced to the favorable regard of unsuspecting youth some amorous knight of easy virtue: still they have so mingled up virtue and vice, piety and impiety, wisdom and folly, moral beauty and moral deformity, as to confound the understanding and blunt the pure sensibilities of our nature. They have created false virtues, and if they have not called good evil and evil good, they have made certain vices of much less frightful mien, under the names of gallantry, patriotism, chivalry, heroism, &c. Human nature is exaggerated, discolored, misrepresented, in many points. A wrong direction is given to the mind, false motives are inspired, unworthy principles instilled in the minds of the less discriminative readers of their works, and wrong conceptions of honor, greatness and goodness inculcated upon all. In some respects the author of Waverley is to be excepted from this sweeping censure. Of a better temperament, of a more moral constitution and of a more religious education, more historic too and descriptive than merely fanciful or imaginative, he is more conversant with fact and reality, and generally more nearly approaches nature and truth, than most of his contemporaries or predecessors. Still he occasionally outrages the moral sense and good taste, by making his outlaws heroic, noble and honorable men; thus creating false virtues and dishonoring the true. [88] That as life was eking out he condemned his course, the prostitution of his admirable genius and unparalleled powers of description, is to my mind a gratification, though no extenuation of the aberrations of his otherwise splendid and unparalleled career.

      I have not arrayed before you, gentlemen, a per contra list of the great reformers and benefactors of mankind; I have not laid before you any samples of the men of genius selected from prophets, apostles, saints or martyrs; I have not told you of the inventors of useful arts, of the founders of benevolent institutions, or of the great and splendid discoveries of men of science. Nor have the Christian poets, writers, orators, reformers, missionaries, been arrayed before you. We have not spoken of the wide-spread and long-enduring influence of a Claude, a Wickliffe, a Luther, or a Calvin, or of the bright deeds of illustrious fame of a Barnard, a Howard, or a Robert Raikes. No, these are common and familiar as household words. Yet the last mentioned of these, though of no remarkable genius, by setting on foot the Sunday-school system, has done for the world more than all the conquerors of nations, founders of empires and great political demagogues whose names are inscribed upon the rolls of fame. Eternity alone can develop the wide-spreading and long-continued series of good and happy consequences, direct and indirect, resulting from their schemes of benevolence and deeds of mercy. Their noble influence may be compared in its beginnings to the salient fountain of some of earth's grandest rivers, which, though not ankle-deep, issuing from beneath a little rock on some lofty mountain's brow, after wending its serpentine way for thousands of miles through many a rich valley and fertile plain, and receiving the contributions of numerous tributary streams, finally disembogues its deep broad flood into the ocean, carrying on its majestic bosom the products of many climes and the wealth of many nations. So, in the course of ages, the labors of the more distinguished benefactors of mankind, at first humble and circumscribed, yield largely accumulating revenues of glory and felicity; and carry down, not only to the remotest times and to the most distant nations, manifold blessings; but occasionally, transcending the boundaries of earth and time, they flow into eternity itself, carrying home to God and the universe untold multitudes of pure and happy beings.

      But, gentlemen, to escape the imputation of merely theorizing on this subject in the form of vague generalities, allow me to press the subject on your attention in the more practical form of a few leading specifications.

      First, then, it is a paramount responsibility resting upon all persons [89] having talents--upon every one possessing genius, to cultivate those noble powers which God has bestowed upon them. The gift of genius is a special call upon its possessor to cultivate and improve it to the highest possible degree. It is already established that men of superior intellect and moral power must govern the world. Men might as successfully legislate against the Ten Commandments, or enact statutes against conjugal affection or filial reverence, as to think of legislating against the subordination of inferior to superior minds. God has so constituted the world. As, then, it must be so, how great the responsibility resting upon those possessed by nature of the higher mental endowments to cultivate them to the utmost perfection! The marble in the quarry, the ore in the mountain, or the diamond in the sand, is not susceptible of greater improvement and polish by art, than is the human mind, especially a highly gifted mind. Education adorns as well as enlarges and strengthens the human soul. Demosthenes might always have stammered in his father's blacksmith-shop but for his devotion to intellectual improvement.

      But it is not intellect alone, however highly cultivated, that commands either the admiration or the reverence of mankind. It is not mere intellect that governs the world. It is intellect associated with moral excellence. Hence the necessity of the proper cultivation of the moral nature of man. That the divine similitude of man consists more in his moral than in his merely intellectual constitution,, needs neither argument nor proof. And that the Supreme Lawgiver and Governor of the universe reigns over the empire of mind by goodness, justice and truth, rather than by mere intellect, whether called knowledge, wisdom or power, is equally plain to all who can reason, or indeed think on what passes before them in the developments of nature, society and religion.

      That the moral nature of man is, therefore, to be sedulously and constantly cultivated, is not more obviously evident than is the still more interesting fact, that in the direct ratio of its importance is the facility with which it may be accomplished, provided it be submitted to the proper means, timously commenced, and perseveringly prosecuted when most susceptible of moral impressions. It is in this department that the law of improvement is necessarily the law of healthful exercise, whose immutable tendency is enlargement and corroboration. He, then, that would gain the full advantage of his talents, and secure the legitimate rewards of genius, must pay a supreme regard to the cultivation and high development of his moral nature. In this way only can he obtain and wield an influence commensurate with all his powers of blessing and being blessed. Had Demosthenes, [90] the model orator and statesman of both Greece and Rome, devoted his mighty genius to the moral as well as the intellectual improvement of his mind, the bribe of Harpalus, the parasite of Alexander, would not have tempted him; nor would he have terminated his days by poison, obscuring the glories of his great name by self-murder, the greatest and meanest of mortal sins.

      But, in the second place, it is supremely incumbent on all men of genius that they choose a calling most favorable to the promotion of the best and greatest interests of human kind. In the social system there are many offices to be filled, many services to be performed, and consequently many persons needed to perform them. Of these offices there are all degrees of comparison--the needful, the more needful, the most needful--the honorable, the more honorable, the most honorable. The scale of utility is, indeed, the scale of honor. That calling is always the most honorable that is the most useful; and that is the most useful which is the most necessary to the completion and perfection of human happiness. "The glory of God," (a phrase more current than well understood,) the glory of God can best be promoted by promoting the happiness of man. Indeed, it can be promoted in no other way. Now, as man is susceptible of individual and social happiness--of animal, intellectual and moral gratifications and pleasures--that happiness is to be regarded the highest which comprehends the greatest variety and the largest amount of blessedness.

      It so happens, however, that whatever produces the greatest amount of moral felicity also yields the greatest variety of enjoyment. This is founded upon the fact that moral pleasure is not only most exquisite in degree, hilt is itself founded upon the harmonious fruition of our entire constitution. Hence the virtuous man is always the most happy man, because virtue is essential to the entire enjoyment of his whole animal, intellectual and moral nature. The restraints which virtue imposes upon the minor gratifications are laid only far the purpose of securing the major both in variety and degree.

      Now, as intellect and society are essential to morality and virtue, those offices and callings which have most to do with these, are most productive of human happiness. From conceptions of this sort arose the preference given to what are usually called the learned professions. But law, physic and theology are but chapters in this great category; they are not, in my opinion, the component parts of it; they do not engross the learned professions. For unfortunately it does not always follow that those who engage in these three professions are either learned men or learned in their respective professions, nor is it true [91] that these are the only callings that require much learning. Some of the mechanical arts, politics and agriculture, require as much learning as either law or medicine. The school-master's vocation and that of the professor of language and science ought to be not only regarded, but actually constituted, learned professions. Indeed, all professions would be the better of a little more learning than is usually thought indispensable. A learned carpenter and cordwainer there might be, as well as a learned blacksmith, without any detriment to those callings or to the learned professions. And as all men are in this community, in virtue of our political institutions, constituted politicians, lawgivers, judges and magistrates, whenever the people pronounce their sovereign fiat, the number of learned professions might be at least doubled, and perhaps quadrupled, without any detriment to the state or any jeopardy of human happiness.

      In this allusion to learned callings it may be regarded as a culpable omission should I not name the military and naval professions. True, indeed, so far as any callings are purely belligerent, they are not very, nearly allied to the theory of human happiness, how important soever they may be to that of human safety. The preservation and enjoyment of human life, rather than the scientific destruction of it, fall more directly within the purview of our present remarks. Generals, heroes and conquerors are very illustrious men in the esteem of the more rude and barbarous nations of the world, but as civilization advances they uniformly fall back into the rank and file of Nimrod, Tamerlane, Alaric and Company.

      One of the greatest misfortunes entailed upon society is the opinion that great generals are great and noble men, and that those callings which have the most gunpowder, lead, epaulettes and music about them, are the most splendid, honorable and useful. False views of glory and greatness are not indeed confined to those circles of earth's great ones, but are unfortunately extended to other circles connected as much with the animalism of human nature as they. Political chiefs and successful demagogues are everywhere hailed as men of great parts and good fortunes. Every senator is an honorable man, and every governor is an impersonation of excellency. The worship paid to these political dignitaries deludes the unwary into the idolatry of such offices and officials, and turns their judgment awry from the oracles of reason and the true philosophy of human greatness and human happiness. Indeed, such is the mania for political honors and political office, that more seem to desire the honor of an office than to be an honor to the office. [92]

      We would not, indeed, divest useful offices of their proper honor. To serve a society faithfully, whether as a scavenger of Rome or as a king of the French, is an honor to any man. But to serve society in any capacity promotive of its moral advancement, is the highest style and dignity of man. True, indeed, that in the great category of moral, improvement there are numerous departments, and consequently many offices. There are authors, teachers of all schools, ministers of all grades, missionaries of all mercies, ambassadors of all ranks, employed as conservators, redeemers and benefactors of men. These, in the tendencies and bearings of their respective functions, sweep the largest circles in human affairs. They extend not only to the individual first benefited, not only to those temporally benefited by him, in a long series of generations, but breaking through the confines of time and apace, those benefits reach into eternity and spread themselves over fields of blessings, waving with eternal harvests of felicity to multitudes of participants which the arithmetic of time wholly fails to compute, either in number or in magnitude. The whole vista of time is but the shaft of a grand telescope through which to see, at the proper angle, the teeming harvests of eternal blessedness flowing, into the bosoms of the great moral benefactors of human kind. To choose a calling of this sort is superlatively incumbent on men of genius. As Wesley said of good music, so say we of good talents. The devil, said the reformer, shall not have all the good tunes; and we add, nor the law, nor politics, nor the stage, all the good talents.

      If men are held responsible, not only for all the evil they have done, but also for all the good they might have done--as undoubtedly they will be; and if they are to be rewarded, not for having genius and talent, but for having used them in accordance with the Divine will, and the dictates of conscience, then what immense and overwhelming interests are merged in the question--to what calling should men of great parts and of good education devote themselves? Taste, inclination and talent are altogether, and always, to be taken into the account in a matter of such thrilling interest. But we are speaking of men of genius in general, and not of a particular class. The historic painter may, like our great West, give us Bible characters and Bible scenes. We may as well have the patriarchal scenes, tabernacle and temple scenes, official personages and festivals upon the walls of our rooms and museums, as the, island of Calypso, or the ruins of the Capitol, or the Pantheon, or the panorama of Mexico, Paris or Waterloo. The poet may sing of Zion, and Siloam, of Jerusalem and its King, as well as of the wrath of Achilles, the siege of Troy, or the [93] adventures of Eneas. An orator may as well plead for God as for man, for eternity as for time, for heaven as for earth; he may as well plead for man's salvation, as for his political rights and immunities; and the same learning and eloquence that gain for a client a good inheritance or a fair reputation, might, also, have gained for him an unfading crown, and an enduring inheritance. It depends upon the taste of the man of genius of any peculiar kind, to what cause he may supremely devote it. It is his duty, however, to bring it to the best market, and to consecrate it to the noblest and most exalted good.

      But, finally, it is not only incumbent on men of genius that they cultivate their talents to the greatest perfection, and that they select the noblest and most useful calling, but that they also prosecute them with the greatest vigor, and devote themselves to them with the most persevering assiduity. It is not he that enters upon any career, or starts in any race, but he that runs well, and perseveringly, that gains the plaudits of others, or the approval of his own conscience.

      Life is a great struggle. It is one splendid campaign, a race, a contest for interests, honors and pleasures of the, highest character, and of the most enduring importance. Happy the man of genius who cultivates all his powers with a reference thereunto, who chooses the most noble calling, and who prosecutes it with all his might. Such a one, ultimately, secures to himself the admiration of all the great, the wise, the good. Such a one will always enjoy the approbation of his own judgment and conscience: and, better still, the approbation of his God and Redeemer. How pleasing to him who has run the glorious race, to survey from the lofty summit of his eternal fame, the cumulative results of an active life, developed in the light of eternity! How transporting to contemplate the proximate and the remote, the direct and the indirect beatific fruits of his labors reflected from the bright countenances of enraptured myriads, beaming with grateful emotion to him as the honored instrument of having inducted them into those paths of righteousness which led them into the fruition of riches, honors and pleasures boundless as the universe and enduring as the ages of eternity! That such, gentlemen, may be your happy choice and glorious destiny, is the sincere desire of your friend and orator. [94]

[PLA 73-94]