[Transcriber's note: Footnotes moved to end of document.]



THE

ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

VOL. XIII.--FEBRUARY, 1864.--NO. LXXVI

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by Ticknor and
Fields, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of
Massachusetts.

* * * * *

GENIUS.


When Paul Morphy plays seven games of chess at once and blindfold, when
young Colburn gives _impromptu_ solution to a mathematical problem
involving fifty-six figures, we are struck with hopeless wonder: such
power is separated by the very extent of it from our mental operations.
But when we further observe that these feats are attended by little or
no fatigue,--that this is the play, not the tension of faculty, we
recognize a new kind, not merely a new degree, of intelligence. These
men seem to leap, not labor step by step, to their results. Colburn sees
the complication of values, Morphy that of moves, as we see the relation