I fancy that our own emotions, our own sense of our destiny, make the great lever of the inert matter we accumulate.
'Look in thy heart and write,' said an old English writer,* who did not, however, practise what he preached.

And you, Signor--" * Sir Philip Sidney.
"Am nothing, and would be something," said the young man, shortly and bitterly.
"And how does that wish not realise its object ?" "Merely because I am Italian," said Cesarini.

"With us there is no literary public--no vast reading class--we have dilettanti and literati, and students, and even authors; but these make only a coterie, not a public.

I have written, I have published; but no one listened to me.

I am an author without readers." "It is no uncommon case in England," said Maltravers.
The Italian continued: "I thought to live in the mouths of men--to stir up thoughts long dumb--to awaken the strings of the old lyre! In vain.
Like the nightingale, I sing only to break my heart with a false and melancholy emulation of other notes." "There are epochs in all countries," said Maltravers, gently, "when peculiar veins of literature are out of vogue, and when no genius can bring them into public notice.