As character comprises the entire sphere of the educated will, so temperament is nothing else than the sum of our natural inclinations and tendencies… - Ernst, Baron von Feuchtersleben

To correct the tribe of our younger poets we shall soon require the aid of a physician, not of a critic. Their history may be told in a few words. A young man educated, or rather mis-educated, without experience, without study, without any definite tendency, without the power of exertion, or of tasting any genuine enjoyment, becomes conscious of his miserable oscillation between existence and non-existence —between not having lived and not being about to live—between a barren past and a barren future. He now takes to novel reading, frequents the theatres, compares himself to heroes or poets, and makes verses. All on a sudden the thought flashes across his mind that his unhappy condition is connected with the unfilled profundity of his feelings—with an unsatisfied yearning of the soul. He rushes headlong into the ocean of melancholy, and indulges in expressions with which the poetic springs of latter years have inundated us; he bathes in these waters, and contemplates his own image reflected from their surface.

We have aimed at popularity in the best sense of that term. The truly popular writer never sinks into the vulgar crowd. He rather raises the masses by bringing the highest subjects within their comprehension, making them, without a show of erudition, easily understood

“The greatest treasure that God can give his creatures is and ever will be—genuine existence". If these words of Herder be true, cultivation is the key to the most precious of treasures; for as Nature has insured the permanence of existence by implanting in us a force of resistance and self-renovation, so may we, on our side, increase the force of these attributes by self-acquired powers of mind.