Often we hear, from the confessions of men of genius, of their having in youth indulged the most elevating and the most chimerical projects; and if age ridicule thy imaginative existence, be assured that it is the decline of its genius.
That virtuous and tender enthusiast, FENELON, in his early youth, troubled his friends with a classical and religious reverie.

He was on the point of quitting them to restore the independence of Greece, with the piety of a missionary, and with the taste of a classical antiquary.

The Peloponnesus opened to him the Church of Corinth where St.Paul preached, the Piraeus where Socrates conversed; while the latent poet was to pluck laurels from Delphi, and rove amidst the amenities of Tempe.

Such was the influence of the ideal presence; and barren will be his imagination, and luckless his fortune, who, claiming the honours of genius, has never been touched by such a temporary delirium.
To this enthusiasm, and to this alone, can we attribute the self-immolation of men of genius.

Mighty and laborious works have been pursued, as a forlorn hope, at the certain destruction of the fortune of the individual.