though too often self-inflicted? Alas! the sensibility which is one of
the most invariable characteristics of Genius, and by which its most
glorious efforts are achieved, if excited into unhealthy action by
over-exercise, not unseldom renders its possessor unreasonable and
wretched, while his works are benefiting or delighting others, and
while the very persons who most highly appreciate them are often the
least disposed to pardon the errors of their author.

As the dancer, by the constant practice of her art, soon loses that
roundness of _contour_ which is one of the most beautiful peculiarities
of her sex, the muscles of the legs becoming unnaturally developed at
the expense of the rest of the figure, so does the man of genius, by
the undue exercise of this gift, acquire an irritability that soon
impairs the temper, and renders his excess of sensibility a torment to
himself and to others.

The solitude necessary to the exercise of Genius is another fruitful
source of evil to its children. Abstracted from the world, they are apt
to form a false estimate of themselves and of it, and to entertain
exaggerated expectations from it. Their morbid feelings are little able
to support the disappointment certain to ensue, and they either rush
into a reprisal of imaginary wrongs, by satire on others, or inflict
torture on themselves by the belief, often erroneous, of the injuries
they have sustained.

I remembered in this abode a passage in one of the best letters ever
written by Rousseau, and addressed to Voltaire, on the subject of his
poem, entitled _Sur la Loi Naturelle, et sur le Désastre de Lisbonne_;
in which, referring to an assertion of Voltaire's that few persons
would wish to live over again on the condition of enduring the same