the simple and purely physical one
      of free exercise in the open air. “The health,” he said,
      “attainable by other means than this is scarcely worth the name.”
      He pointed to the tillers of the earth—the only people who, as a
      class, are proverbially more happy than others—and then he
      instanced the high ecstasies of the fox-hunter. His second
      principle was the love of woman. His third was the contempt of
      ambition. His fourth was an object of unceasing pursuit; and he
      held that, other things being equal, the extent of happiness was
      proportioned to the spirituality of this object. I have said that Ellison was remarkable in the continuous
      profusion of good gifts lavished upon him by Fortune. In personal
      grace and beauty he exceeded all men. His intellect was of that
      order to which the attainment of knowledge is less a labor than a
      necessity and an intuition. His family was one of the most
      illustrious of the empire. His bride was the loveliest and most
      devoted of women. His possessions had been always ample; but,
      upon the attainment of his one and twentieth year, it was
      discovered that one of those extraordinary freaks of Fate had
      been played in his behalf which startle the whole social world
      amid which they occur, and seldom fail radically to alter the
      entire moral constitution of those who are their objects. It
      appears that about one hundred years prior to Mr. Ellison’s
      attainment of his majority, there had died, in a remote province,
      one Mr. Seabright Ellison. This gentlemen had amassed a princely
      fortune, and, having no very immediate connexions, conceived the
      whim of suffering his wealth to accumulate for a century after
      his decease. Minutely and sagaciously directing the various modes
      of investment, he bequeathed the aggregate amount to the nearest
      of blood, bearing the name Ellison, who should be alive at the
      end of the hundred years. Many futile attempts had been made to
      set aside this singular bequest; their ex post facto character
      rendered them abortive; but the attention of a jealous government
      was aroused, and a decree finally obtained, forbidding all
      similar accumulations. This act did not prevent young Ellison,
      upon his twenty-first birth-day, from entering into possession,
      as the heir of his ancestor, Seabright, of a fortune of four
      hundred and fifty millions of dollars. {*1}

      When it had become definitely known that such was the enormous
      wealth inherited, there were, of course, many speculations as to
      the mode of its disposal. The gigantic magnitude and the
      immediately available nature of the sum, dazzled and bewildered
      all who thought upon the topic. The possessor of any appreciable
      amount of money might have been imagined to perform any one of a
      thousand things. With riches merely surpassing those of any
      citizen, it would have been easy to suppose him engaging to
      supreme excess in the fashionable extravagances of his time; or
      busying himself with political intrigues; or aiming at
      ministerial power; or purchasing increase of nobility, or
      devising gorgeous architectural piles; or collecting large
      specimens of Virtu; or playing the munificent patron of Letters
      and Art; or endowing and bestowing his name upon extensive
      institutions of charity. But, for the inconceivable wealth in the
      actual possession of the young heir, these objects and all
      ordinary objects were felt to be inadequate. Recourse was had to
      figures; and figures but sufficed to confound. It was seen, that
      even at three per cent, the annual income of the inheritance
      amounted to no less than thirteen millions and five hundred
      thousand dollars; which was one million and one hundred and
      twenty-five thousand per month; or thirty-six thousand, nine
      hundred and eighty-six per day, or one thousand five hundred and
      forty-one per hour, or six and twenty dollars for every minute
      that flew. Thus the usual track of supposition was thoroughly
      broken up. Men knew not what to imagine. There were some who even
      conceived that Mr. Ellison would divest himself forthwith of at
      least two-thirds of his fortune as of utterly superfluous
      opulence; enriching whole troops of his relatives by division of
      his superabundance. I was not surprised, however, to perceive that he had long made
      up his mind upon a topic which had occasioned so much of
      discussion to his friends. Nor was I greatly astonished at the
      nature of his decision. In the widest and noblest sense, he was a
      poet. He comprehended, moreover, the true character, the august
      aims, the supreme majesty and dignity of the poetic sentiment. The proper gratification of the sentiment he instinctively felt
      to lie in the creation of novel forms of Beauty. Some
      peculiarities, either in his early education, or in the nature of
      his intellect, had tinged with what is termed materialism the
      whole cast of his ethical speculations; and it was this bias,
      perhaps, which imperceptibly led him to perceive that the most
      advantageous, if not the sole legitimate field for the exercise
      of the poetic sentiment, was to be found in the creation of novel
      moods of purely physical loveliness. Thus it happened that he
      became neither musician nor poet; if we use this latter term in
      its every-day acceptation. Or it might have been that he became
      neither the one nor the other, in pursuance of an idea of his
      which I have already mentioned—the idea, that in the contempt of
      ambition lay one of the essential principles of happiness on
      earth. Is it not, indeed, possible that while a high order of
      genius is necessarily ambitious, the highest is invariably above
      that which is termed ambition? And may it not thus happen that
      many far greater than Milton, have contentedly remained “mute and
      inglorious?” I believe the world has never yet seen, and that,
      unless through some series of accidents goading the noblest order
      of mind into distasteful exertion, the world will never behold,
      that full extent of triumphant execution, in the richer
      productions of Art, of which the human nature is absolutely
      capable. Mr. Ellison became neither musician nor poet; although no man
      lived more profoundly enamored both of Music and the Muse. Under
      other circumstances than those which invested him, it is not
      impossible that he would have become a painter. The field of
      sculpture, although in its nature rigidly poetical, was too
      limited in its extent and in its consequences, to have occupied,
      at any time, much of his attention.