"Happy he who possesses this double power of meditation and inspiration, which is genius! Whatever may be the age on which he is, or the country—be he born in the bosom of domestic calamities, be he thrown on a time of popular convulsions, or, what is still more to be lamented, on a period of stagnant indifference—let him trust himself to the future; for, if the present belong to other men, the future is for him. He is of the number of chosen beings for whom a day is allotted. Sooner or later, the day comes; and it is then—fed by sublime thought, and elevated by divine inspiration—that he throws himself boldly before the world, with the cry of the poet upon his lips ‘Voici mon Orient: peuples levez les yeux!’"