102 A Walk from 



fixed and rigidly technical, as simple light- writing, or 

 sun-writing. The term is completely pre-occupied by 

 this signification, and you cannot inject the human life- 

 element into it. Biography is universally limited to an 

 operation in which the life is the subject, not the agent. 

 It is simply the writing out of a life's history by some 

 one with a common goosequill or steel pen. Still, the 

 word biograph would be the best, of the same length, 

 that we could form to describe one of these disks of light, 

 if it were made the same verb active as photograph; or to 

 mean that the life is the agent, as well as the subject, 

 that it writes itself in light upon a certain locality, just 

 as the sun graves a human face upon glass. Let us then 

 call the bright and quenchless planispheres, which such 

 lives describe and fill around them, biographs, assuming 

 that the script is in rays of light. As differ the stars 

 above in glory, so these differ in the qualities of their 

 illumination. The brightest of them, to mere human 

 seeming, are those which shine with the sheer brilliancy 

 of intellect and genius. These chiefly halo the homes 

 of " the grand old masters " of poetry, painting, elo- 

 quence and martial glory. These attract to their disks 

 pilgrims the most numerous and enthusiastic. But, 

 as the nearest stars are brightest, not largest, so these 

 biographs are brightest on their earth-side. There are 

 thousands of less sharp and spangling lustre to the 



