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"The future historian of the century will have to record the marvellous fact that while in the reign of Queen Victoria there was initiated, formulated, and methodised an entirely new cosmogony, its most powerful and highly-gifted man of letters was preaching a polity and a philosophy of history that would have better harmonised with the time of Queen Semiramis. . . . Long before he launched his sarcasms at human progress, there had been a conviction among thinkers that it was not the hero that developed the race, but a deep mysterious energy in the race that produced the hero; that the wave produced the bubble, and not the bubble the wave.
His heart was case-hardened, and his conscience, like gum, elastic; it would readily stretch, on the shortest notice, to any required extent, while his well-tutored countenance betrayed no indication of what was passing in his mind. But I must not forget to give a sketch of the appearance, or outward man, of this highly-gifted individual.
Thus through him again I learned how light a touch is needed to overthrow a man's true faith; and when I minded me of Herdegen and Ann, and of this Giacomo who was nevertheless a goodly and well-graced man and his young wife, meseemed that the woman who might win the love of a highly-gifted soul must ofttimes pay for that great joy with much heaviness and heartache.
Incessant toil is the destiny of such highly-gifted men while here below; and not unfrequently is their memory assailed by those mean and little minds who shrunk with instinctive fear and hatred before the energetic movements which they could neither comprehend nor encounter.
My mother was inexpressibly delighted with this valuable token of his regard, and her affection for the highly-gifted painter became truly maternal. About this period I remarked a mysterious change in the looks and habits of Colonna.
It is a broad, bluff, open face, with abundance of brain-development, with plenty of shrewd intelligence, and not a little of strong volition the presentation of a strong, highly-gifted and thoroughly self-radiant character, but the last face in the world to have belonged to a man accustomed to sacrifice much to the graces or elegancies of life.
In the spring of the following year I went again to the Marshalls', in company with one or two other persons, my own object being to see if I could obtain communication from the spirit of a highly-gifted lady who had recently died and also, I may mention had been the medium of my previous slight acquaintance with Mr. Coleman.
It is a lesson yet to be learned, that genius gives no charter for the indulgence of error, a truth yet to be remembered, that only a small portion of the world will look with leniency on the failings of the highly-gifted; and, that from themselves, the consequences of their own actions can never be averted.
It is invariably true that economy must be difficult, and therefore admirable in proportion to the warm-heartedness and the refined tastes of those who practise it. The highly-gifted and the generous meet with a thousand temptations to expenditure beyond their means, of the number and strength of which the less amiable and refined can form no adequate conception.
"Whenever our great prophet consoles his neighbours with the announcement that the winter is not going to be at all severe, but principally of a southerly character, everybody rushes away in alarm, and buys all the wood he can cram into his cellar. The weather-prophet is a wise and highly-gifted man, whom we can thoroughly trust, so long as we expect the exact reverse of what he predicts."