Embraces alike great and small.

'So, although in the season of rain-storms and showers,
The tree may strike deeper its roots,
It needs the warm brightness of sunshiny hours
To ripen the blossoms and fruits.'

Observe, not only the genuine merit of these five pieces, but the
variety in the tones of thought: then compare them with similar
productions of the days, say, of the once famous L.E.L.

And what holds good of verse holds infinitely better in respect to
prose. The enormous improvement in our prose writers (I am not speaking
of geniuses, remember, but of the generality), and their great
superiority over writers of the same class half a century ago, is mainly
due to use. Sir Walter Scott, who, like most men of genuine power, had
great generosity, once observed to a brother author, 'You and I came
just in the nick of time.' He foresaw the formidable competition that
was about to take place, though he had no cause to fear it. I think in
these days he would have had cause; not that I disbelieve in his genius,
but that I venture to think he diffused it over too large an area. In
such cases genius is overpassed by the talent which husbands its
resources; in other words, Nature succumbs to second nature, as the wife
in the patriarchal days (when _she_ grew patriarchal) succumbed to the
handmaid. And after all, though we talk so glibly about genius, and
profess to feel, though we cannot express, in what it differs from
talent, are we quite so sure about this as we would fain persuade
ourselves? At all events, it cannot surely be contended that a man of
genius always writes like one; and when he does not, his work is often
inferior to the first-rate production of a man of talent. For my own