To Mrs. Lesley.

Cambridge, May 7, 1871.

. . . After I finished my lectures, most of which I wrote after I had begun to give them (finding this the safest way), my pen suffered a great drought, and would shed no more ink

except in the way of work, — until I began to think that I had lost all power of spontaneous effort. Three charming letters from my friends abroad, received during the winter, still remain unanswered.

Why is it that such an accumulation of short-comings is thought of as an excuse? I suppose it is that we prefer to be thought of as acting on principle though a bad one, and as generally weak rather than particularly wicked. But sickness is a plea I hate almost as much as selfishness, and, indeed, I haven’t it to fall back upon solidly; for I have not been ill at all to speak of, — only glum, you know, or with an ailment spread out over many months, which consolidated into a week might have needed a doctor’s care. . . . With me the spring is still medicinal, which shows that some of the gemmules of youth are in my constitution. I have for a week past resolutely performed a daily “constitutional” of ten miles, with great profit to my sleeping capacities. . . . What you say about your plans for Mary’s instruction seems to me admirable, and I can conceive nothing that appears better than your proposal to have her taught topographical drawing; for the arts of the hand have so many uses that I have often thought that the training of it, even without reference to any special accomplishment or proficiency, ought to be a part of liberal education. And now-a-days, when so many arts of this sort are finding their way into the curriculum, like chemical manipulation and the use of philosophical instruments generally, there need be no fear of sacrificing general culture to any narrow utility by such a training. Besides, though men are, as Stuart Mill admits, superior to women in patient plodding of the brain, and certainly in the coarser use of their muscles, as in the stout bearings of burdens, — yet in delicacy, both of muscle and thought, women are doubtless equal, if not superior. Still, it should not be overlooked that the greater part even of genius, or at least of its success, lies

in strength and patience, — for many geniuses have told us that their power was “a prolonged patience and it is very gratifying and the happiest augury, that Mary has grown to be so strong and ambitious.

I doubt a little, however, about this concurrent testimony of geniuses j for on this point they are not the best judges. They are generally too modest to like, more than other sensible men, to be thought singular; and, finding their work appreciated, they have imagined that others have the same delicacy of perception that they have. They forget that the judgments of criticism and unobstructed afterthought are much easier than those of invention and forethought; and wishing to correct the opinion of dullards, that the triumphs of genius are born without labor, they have exaggerated the importance of strength and effort as compared to skill. I once admired Dr. Johnson’s definition of genius as large natural ability accidentally directed; but I am now convinced that directive skill, or delicacy of action and perception, is an essential part of it.

I may seem to you to have run quite off the track, since I was talking about Mary and not about Sir Isaac Newton. Still, I am not so far off as may seem, for I do not admit so wide a distinction between talent and genius as would-be geniuses assert in justification of their laziness. The widest difference is mainly this: that genius is led by its skill to apply its efforts successfully to the most difficult, and talent only to the least difficult, work. The first captures a fortress or carries a fortified position: the other makes long and laborious but little obstructed marches.

... I, had not half told the news before these impertiuent abstractions interposed themselves, “which require most plodding and long hammering at single thoughts.” I was going on to say that I have a pretty definite (for me) plan of going abroad this summer for a visit, at least to England, and

that I have dreamed that I may go in July. This is very far from the concrete engagement of a passage, and, judged by my projects generally, is very far from any sort of realization. Even now I hesitate in making the prediction, lest I abridge my future freedom by a quasi promise; since friends hold one another to virtuous courses, or to what they judge for one another the best, by insisting on consistency and by basing their respect for one another on what may be counted on, even to the fulfilling of intentions as well as the keeping of promises. The great majority of my friends and acquaintances in this community have been abroad or are going soon, so that the very obscurity that I love, the shade I instinctively seek from the glare of conspicuous singularity, ought to draw me abroad. '

The Gurneys will not go this summer, for they have just moved into their new home, a very attractive house which they have lately built on the heights near Mr. Lowell’s. The Norton house is let for two years and a half more to Alexander Agassiz. This looks as if their stay abroad would be lengthened out rather than shortened. ... They passed the winter in the neighborhood of Florence, in a villa which was at one time, according to a tablet commemorative of the fact, the residence of Galileo, and may have been the place where the great philosopher was visited by Milton. What charm there must be in touching and seeing these material mementoes of great spiritual facts, — to watch the same moon rising over the same city of Florence, from the same point of view, where great thoughts were meditated! This, more than any other motive, makes me wish to visit England, from whose history I am chiefly descended. I grow more and more conscious every year that my most cherished thoughts and interests are of English origin. My blood, though English too, is nothing to them but their accidental road. All American interests and charms are in the future,

or in a short past development prophetic of this future. They are not new powers or principles, but better opportunities for the old to work themselves out. They are not the struggle for the victory, but the realization of its fruits. For five hundred years, from the time when old William Occam asserted common sense and experience against the devoted and enthusiastic subtilties of continental and Celtic schoolmen, England has taken the lead in every great revolution in thought and practice, even down to Darwinism. Other nations have done much in carrying out and even in discovering in detail the principles of practice and science; but wherever a great victory had to be won for progress, and principles had to be established not only in experience but against authority, English genius has done it. If this be attributed to English freedom, it comes to the same thing; for English freedom was the product of English genius or common sense, aided, no doubt, by an insular position. Here progress has been substantial. They have kept old forms and names, but changed the things, while their unlucky neighbors, the French, have changed often the names of old abuses and absurdities, but kept the things, — fighting, they think, for progress, but really warring only against fetishes. Therefore, though eight generations removed from English soil, I am still an Englishman, and hope to touch the old ground of these battles again.

To find myself so near the end of a second sheet gives me renewed confidence in my pen, and faith in its rejuvenescence. I hope it may give you as much satisfaction. I shall try next a letter to Charles Norton; and then I shall put in ink and prepare for the print of the “North American Review” some rods I have in pickle for Mr. St. George Mivart, the English naturalist, whose book on “The Genesis of Species” I have nearly finished reading. ... I never sent you or told you about my criticism of Mr. Wallace’s book in the last October

number, and as the “Review” has a rather limited circulation perhaps you have never seen it. After what some small critics said of it, I had little disposition to claim credit for it; but now that Mr. Darwin, in his last work, “The Descent of Man,” has recognized its merits, Descent of Man, Vol. II. c. xix. p. 319, note (Appleton’s ed., N. Y., 1871). The article is referred to in this book more than once. ⁶¹ I have grown quite proud of it.