The rapture of the creative mood and moment is the reward of the little group whose touch on any kind of material is imperishable.  It comes when the spell of inspired work is on them, or in the moment which follows immediately on completion and before the reaction of depression—­which is the heavy penalty of the artistic temperament—­has set in.  Balzac knew it in that frenzy of work which seized him for days together; and Thackeray knew it, as he confesses, when he had put the finishing touches on that striking scene in which Rawdon Crawley thrashes Lord Steyne within an inch of his wicked life.  The great novelist, who happened also to be a great writer, knew that the whole scene, in conception and execution, was a stroke of genius.  But while this supreme rapture belongs to a chosen few, it may be shared by all those who are ready to open the imagination to its approach.  It is one of the great rewards of the artist that while other kinds of joy are often pathetically short-lived, his joy, having brought forth enduring works, is, in a sense, imperishable.  And it not only endures; it renews itself in kindred moments and experiences which it bestows upon those who approach it sympathetically.  There are lines in the “Divine Comedy” which thrill us to-day as they must have thrilled Dante; there are passages in the Shakespearian plays and sonnets which make a riot in the blood to-day as they doubtless set the poet’s pulses beating three centuries ago.  The student of literature, therefore, finds in its noblest works not only the ultimate results of race experience and the characteristic quality of race genius, but the highest activity of the greatest minds in their happiest and most expansive moments.  In this commingling of the best that is in the race and the best that is in the individual lies the mystery of that double revelation which makes every work of art a disclosure not only of the nature of the man behind it, but of all men behind him.  In this commingling, too, is preserved the most precious deposit of what the race has been and done, and of what the man has seen, felt, and known.  In the nature of things no educational material can be richer; none so fundamentally expansive and illuminative.

This contact with the richest personalities the world has produced is one of the deepest sources of culture; for nothing is more truly educative than association with persons of the highest intelligence and power.  When a man recalls his educational experience, he finds that many of his richest opportunities were not identified with subjects or systems or apparatus, but with teachers.  There is fundamental truth in Emerson’s declaration that it makes very little difference what you study, but that it is in the highest degree important with whom you study.  There flows from the living teacher a power which no text-book can compass or contain,—­the power of liberating the imagination and setting the student free to become an original investigator.