trade and German handicrafts, while we English in our blindness think
to dispose of it by cant phrases and sneers.

To the nearer friends of his home-circle Wagner's personality must
have been singularly attractive, from the intelligent sympathy which
he showed with everything human, and from the irrepressible gaiety
which never forsook him for long. In times of stress it helped those
around him to tide through the most crushing disasters.

Genius is not a thing apart by itself, severed from the rest of the
world. Its one distinguishing mark is its intense humanity. If I may
speak in paradox, the true poet is more truly ourselves than we are.
The astronomical telescope is constructed upon the same principles as
the terrestrial one, only it is more powerful and more perfectly made.
Not only the lenses, but all the details of the mechanism are more
highly finished; more thought and more labour are bestowed upon them;
the parts are more skilfully co-ordinated together; it is a better
instrument. We do wrong to genius in connecting it with mental
aberration; it is more normal, more perfectly human, than we are; more
human in its virtues, in its faults, in its follies, above all, in its
consummate beauty; only with its greater perfection the organism
becomes more delicate, and is more easily injured. For genius is
exposed to heavier strains than we are, because it is in uncongenial
surroundings. If one part happen to be imperfect, if, as we say, "a
screw be loose," the injury is more serious than in ordinary natures,
and the exquisite adjustments may suffer in the rude handling of a
stupid and clumsy environment, wrecking the whole system. This, and
not natural proclivity, is the reason why genius so often shows a
tendency to eccentric and abnormal conduct. The fault is with society,
which feels instinctively that those who rise too high in excellence