XLI. CHRIST DECLARING WHO SHOULD BE GREATEST. PERHAPS it is a part of the imperfection of any created, intelligent being, not to be perfectly satisfied with what he is, or with what he has done. It may be a part of his nature, urging him onward to greater perfection and to higher deeds. All sin consists in perverting what is innocent, and in using forbidden means, and in carrying it to improper limits. It was not sin in Eve to desire to be wiser than she was, but it was sin to use forbidden means to attain the end desired. The disciples of Christ thought he was about to set up an earthly, temporal kingdom; and among themselves they were apportioning out the honours. The grand difficulty seemed to be who should be prime minister," the greatest." This was their standard of greatness. This was and is the only standard ever conceived of by the world-who shall influence the most men by his power, and control them. And since riches increase this influence, and courage and sagacity, learning and skill, shrewdness and foresight, talents and mental endowments, all con tribute towards giving you power over men, all these are coveted. But these are only means to the end. The power of the prime minister "the greatest"-is the goal. What a thought was let in upon the world when Christ taught his disciples that, in the sight of God, humility is greatness!-that the man who would be great in the estimation of the Lord need not wade in blood, nor stand at the head of an empire; but he is great who has a perfect standard of moral character, and, comparing his own imperfections with that standard, is therefore great in humility. Revenge is greatness in the eyes of men, but Christ teaches that forgiveness is the noblest virtue. Office, station, and influence, as men measure, is greatness; but the meek and quiet spirit in the sight of the Lord is of great price. Thus, a child may be greater than a king; a slave, than the warrior, or the prime minister of a great nation. Not only may the poor and lowly thus become great before God, but their very circumstances may aid them to obtain and to cultivate this virtue so desirable,-the greatness of humility, the exaltation of lowliness, and the glory of self-abasement. AMERICAN AUTHORSHIP. BY CHAMPION BISSELL. WITH the term "author" we have been accustomed to couple ideas of carelessness and poverty; of sudden and ill-spent wealth; of reckless indulgence; of fitful and suicidal labour; of dazzling and destructive glory; of harsh and killing neglect. We see Chatterton, like the scorpion hedged about by enemies, a despairing suicide; Johnson struggling for years amid "cocklofts and six-penny ordinaries;" Savage a very byword of destitution; and a host of others equally gifted and unfortunate and we instinctively ask ourselves, "Are these the men who teach us such sublime lessons of life, who give us such ravishing glimpses into the poetic heaven, and make themselves our guides to refinement and happiness?" Surely," we say, "there is a difficult problem here. Have authors been hypocrites, or must republics still be called ungrateful?" 66 Many, doubtless, of the misfortunes of authors are to be attributed directly to their inconsistency. They preach, and practise differently; and the world soon finds it out. Still, this inconsistency would not necessarily produce poverty, though it must bring about personal neglect and dislike; for the book might sell, while the man was shunned. Nor are republics always ungrateful; else Scott's pen would not have built Abbotsford, nor Irving's, Sunnyside. This, to many inexplicable, problem can only be solved by considering that there are strong public tastes everywhere which it is unsafe for the ambitious man to combat; and that facility of adaptation to popular sentiment is an indispensable requisite in the author who grounds his hopes on present fame. start off on a divergent track; will the world follow him? Let him who expects success in so rash an experiment attempt it. From the quagmires in which, with his handful of enthusiastic adherents, he is struggling, he will see the great army of humanity, without a chasm in its ranks, steadily pushing on to the desired goal. It may be that he will creep into its embrace again, a wiser and a more careful man. There have been authors whose genius emboldened them to defy the world and its opinions; and predict a glorious future for works that public taste forced back into their own proud hands. To the ranklings of disappointed ambition, or to the serenity of a prophetic philosophy, a niche in temples not yet built may seem a fair set-off against a warm greeting to a million firesides; but so it will not seem to him who is really in earnest to benefit his species, or advance the dignity and the claims of Art. There is a counterfeit present fame, and there is a true; and the true will live none the less hereafter because the painted counterfeit is soon trodden under foot of men. The day has gone by when truth was obliged to wait centuries for readers; and he who would be the light of the future must seek also to shine in the present. Success cannot longer be held up as the odious badge of charlatanry, nor can neglect be cherished as the seed of a distant but full harvest of renown. So practical and so firmly grounded are popular tastes, that a facility of adapting one's self to them may be regarded as a prime and desirable element of success. It is not necessary for the man of letters to stoop to the low desires that inevitably appear among large bodies, nor to rival base men in defacing the fair mansions of Truth. But it is necessary to cultivate and manifest a profound sympathy with the needs and wishes of the people, to encourage their better impulses, and to show a cheerful willingness to share and lighten their burdens. If the author work in this spirit of enlightened liberality, he must succeed as his talents may deserve, and his success will be the greater as his audience is the larger. It is an opinion, erroneous as wide-spread, that literary men guide public taste and sentiment. The great army of mankind is always headed by men of education and letters; and the conclusion is unthinkingly drawn that it is led by them; whereas this condition of things is simply an alliance by a tacit but binding agreement. The world says to the author, "We are going in a certain direction; will you go with us, and at our head? If you agree, you shall receive our confidence and support. If you will not accompany us under the terms proposed, away with you!" And the man of letters assents, and the masses at his back push him on, and the journey's end is reached. But the world would have arrived there in due time without his aid. He has smoothed the path, helped the weak, encouraged the fearful; and he has only done his duty. But now let him, relying on his genius alone,ture is becoming less a technicality,—s term And so many are the readers to whom the American author appeals, that it shows want of power to please, or want of taste to guide, if he is not met on every side by an attentive audience. The age demands no exclusiveness in authorship, but is willing to hear from every man who can express his mission, on whatever subject it may be. The boundaries of literature are daily widening, and will soon include all subjects that tend in any way to the wellbeing and refinement of mankind. Litera confined to metaphysical essay, philosophical | cuses many sins on the score of genius. It is disquisition, poetry, history, and the drama; it shelters within its stately mansion the devotees of science; in fine, all who have an earnest purpose and art-directed power to pass through the challenges placed at its gates. Art is required no less in the author of the present day who speaks to millions, than it was in the crowned sages and poets of narrow Athens. Vast features of natural scenery, enlarged means of intercommunication, however much they may dignify and inform the mind, do not in the least do away with the necessity of laborious study so indispensable to the possession and perfection of artistic skill. After we have deeply pondered certain great rules, drawn from our observation of successful and noble models, after we have corrected our tastes by the grateful labours of the closet, then we can with safety and conscious strength make use of the gigantic material of this new world. Examples of excess, haste, carelessness, ill-directed genius, lie thickly strewn on either side of our path. Here is a poem planned without art, entered upon without preparation, executed in a breath, and deservedly cast aside to perish; here a novel, crude and shapeless; here a history, which only needed system and pruning to take a position among our permanent literature. Hasty conception and untaught imagination are the immediate causes of the number, and the comparative poverty, of the books of the day. It remains for him who sets out on the path of authorship to decide whether he too shall serve only as a warning to future neophytes, or whether he shall be long and gratefully remembered as a skilful and successful worker in the fields of literature. Authorship, as a profession, has seen its darkest days. The complaints of neglected men of genius need be heard no longer. No good authors starve, or become servile pensioners on bloated ignorance, or earn a scanty subsistence by prostitution of mind to the service of wickedness. Any man who has studied, thought and read, and who discovers in himself by actual trial the power to please others by his pen, may enter upon the calling of an author, secure of an honourable livelihood and as large a share of fame as is reasonable and just. If he is improvident, he cannot expect to escape the consequences of his carelessness; if he wilfully defies the world, he cannot expect that it shall yield to his humours; if he strikes out divergent paths for himself, he cannot complain if he treads them alone. But if, with preparation and purpose, he labours to elevate and instruct society, he will reap a solid and an honourable reward. The world is indulgent;-amply so. It ex common knowledge that the errors of men of letters are treated with exceeding leniency in the halls of justice, and before the juries of the drawing-room and the fireside. Authors are everywhere met with respect. They are exempted from many of the duties of ordinary citizens. Their opinions are carefully regarded. And it is by no means uncommon to behold a writer raised to independence, or even to affluence, solely by the profits of his works. Nor should authorship (and in this case I would not limit it by the word American) be considered a distasteful profession when we take into account certain advantages it possesses over others. It is limited by none of those tedious forms and harsh technicalities which encumber law, medicine, and, in a less degree, theology. The broad domains of literature lie all before the author where to choose. His professional exertions are all intellectual. He is embarrassed by no foreign mechanisms. The rules of art by which he works are genial and grateful helps. The results of his daily observation are pressed directly into his service, and nothing is so minute or trivial that it cannot be made subservient to his greatest designs. I question whether it can be a matter of real regret to a man of sound philosophical views, and real largeness of mind, that his works must inevitably be the object of much jealous and unkind criticism. It is not difficult to believe that most authors are far from being angry when the public takes to making free with even their names and personal peculiarities. No man ever becomes great without being talked about; and a true character is never the worse for having been thoroughly canvassed. Especially must the American writer learn to bear with much that might be galling to an over-sensitive spirit. Let him remember that the number and the virulence of his enemies are in direct proportion to his power of making himself feared by them, and his courage cannot but be strengthened if they be of the "baser sort." Let him not in his youth be afraid of ridicule, for our greatest authors have often been forced to encounter its most pitiless storms. And always let him be reminded that the genius of our nation is essentially inquisitive; that it delights in exploring character; and that a large and constant field for its exercise is never wanting wherever there are cross-roads, and bar-rooms, and men. Perhaps it will aid his philosophy to reflect that our prominent statesmen (to mention none others) have all shared, more or less, this intense scrutiny of personalities, and have as often gained by dignified forbearance, as they have lost by the revelation of their characters, or by actual misrepresentation. |