riches of the giver are not diminished, though they are indeed increased, yet the poverty of the receivers is diminished in a more than like proportion. Their taste is become more fastidious; their curiosity less eager; and if he who would cater for them be deficient in variety and novelty, they discharge the unprofitable servant and take an independent stand upon their own resources. We say their own resources, for we mean the resources of the general mind, the many hoarded individual stores which should be general and public"—
"But which too often," observed the sage, "are buried in the bosom of their miser-like owners, as if mind as well as money did not owe its chief value to active circulation; leaving it too for others to dig as much at random for their treasures, as those industrious vagrants whose researches after 'Captain Kidd's money,' have disturbed every mound upon the coast, and even troubled the repose of my own bones."
"Yet these," we resumed, "these private accumulations of the general wealth are the only coffers adequate to the supply of an enlightened and still advancing community, and upon these shall we repose, trusting fully to the active principle of the present age for the effect—variety of design, and what the political economist calls 'division of labor.' There is probably no man living who cannot do something well, and the man of our age who has caused the greatest things to be done, was he who possessed a power, that seemed like inspiration, of divining and putting into action the talents of those who were most capable of effecting his purposes. That was his arm of conquest and the staff of his strength, and there is none to wield it after him. But still the example of his success is there to prompt us, as far as we may, to fashion our little weapons in our narrower sphere upon the art he has revealed to us."
"Aye, indeed I have heard much of that great captain's doings, even in those shadowy realms, where many a lofty soul like his moves in the dim crowd of disembodied spirits, undistinguished from those who in life would have quailed beneath their glance. But touching those weapons, my son, of which thou spakest but now, surely thou meanest not to encourage the vile spirit of satire in thy publication."
"It was but metaphorically we used the term; nor do we mean that our work shall be the vehicle of bitterness or malice in any shape; yet, while we well know that the prevailing fondness for speaking with levity on the gravest subjects, with ridicule of the noblest sentiments, and be-littling every thing
