do not the least self-sufficient of us hope for something more than the
dirty dollars,--for kindness, affection, loving perusal, and fostering
shelter, long after our brains have mouldered, and the light of our eyes
has been quenched, and our deft fingers have lost their cunning, and the
places that knew us have forgotten our mien and speech and port forever?
Very, very few of us can join in Sir Boyle Roche's blundering sneer at
posterity, and with the hope of immortality mingles a dread of utter
oblivion here. Will it not be consoling, standing close by the graves
which have been prepared for us, to leave the world some little legacy
of wisdom sedulously gleaned from the fields of the fading past,--some
intangible, but honest wealth, the not altogether worthless accumulation
of an humble, but earnest life,--something which may lighten the load of
a sad experience, illuminate the dark hours which as they have come to
all must come to all through all the ages, or at least divert without
debauching the mind of the idler, the trifler, and the macaroni? I
believe this ingenuous feeling to be very far removed from the wheezy
aspirations of windy ignorance, or the spasms for fame which afflict
with colic the bowels, empty and flatulent, of sheer scribblers and
dunces who take a mean advantage of the invention of printing. Let us
be tender of the honest gentlemen who, to quote Cervantes, "aim at
somewhat, but conclude nothing." I cannot smile at the hopes of the boy
Burns,--

"That _he,_ for poor auld Scotland's sake,
Some usefu' plan or beuk could make,
Or sing a sang at least."

And while I am in a humor for quotation, I must give you this muscular
verse from Henry More's "Platonic Song of the Soul":--