II.
SELF-RELIANCE.

I READ the other day some verses written by an eminent
painter which were original and not conventional. The
soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the
subject be what it may. The sentiment they instil is of
more value than any thought they may contain. To believe
your own thought, to believe that what is true for you
in your private heart is true for all men,--that is genius.
Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal
sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost, and
our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets
of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind
is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato
and Milton is that they set at naught books and traditions,
and spoke not what men, but what they thought. A man should
learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes
across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the
firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without
notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of
genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come
back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works
of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They
teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-
humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices
is on the other side. Else to-morrow a stranger will say
with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and
felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame
our own opinion from another.