University of Virginia Library

GENIUS.

It is interesting to notice how some minds seem almost
to create themselves, springing up under every disadvantage,
and working their solitary but irresistible way
through a thousand obstacles. Nature seems to delight
in diappointing the assiduities of art, with which it would
rear legitimate dullness to maturity; and to glory in the

vigour and luxuriance of her chance productions. She
scatters the seeds of genius to the winds, and though
some may perish among the stony places of the world, and
some be choaked by the thorns and brambles of early adversity,
yet others will now and then strike root even in
the clefts of the rock, struggle bravely up into sunshine,
and spread over their sterile birth-place all the beauties of
vegetation.