's manner has this kind of relation to some defect in his physical
powers or modes of thought; so that in the greatest work there is no
manner visible. It is at first uninteresting from its quietness; the
majesty of restrained power only dawns gradually upon us, as we walk
towards its horizon.

There is, indeed, often great delightfulness in the innocent manners of
artists who have real power and honesty, and draw in this way or that, as
best they can, under such and such untoward circumstances of life. But
the greater part of the looseness, flimsiness, or audacity of modern work
is the expression of an inner spirit of license in mind and heart,
connected, as I said, with the peculiar folly of this age, its hope of,
and trust in, "liberty," of which we must reason a little in more general
terms.

148. I believe we can nowhere find a better type of a perfectly free
creature than in the common house-fly. Nor free only, but brave; and
irreverent to a degree which I think no human republican could by any
philosophy exalt himself to. There is no courtesy in him; he does not
care whether it is king or clown whom he teases; and in every step of his
swift mechanical march, and in every pause of his resolute observation,
there is one and the same expression of perfect egotism, perfect
independence and self-confidence, and conviction of the world's having
been made for flies. Strike at him with your hand, and to him, the
mechanical fact and external aspect of the matter is, what to you it
would be if an acre of red clay, ten feet thick, tore itself up from the
ground in one massive field, hovered over you in the air for a second,
and came crashing down with an aim. That is the external aspect of it;
the inner aspect, to his fly's mind, is of a quite natural and
unimportant occurrence--one of the momentary conditions of his active
life. He steps out of the way of your hand, and alights on the back of
it. You cannot terrify him, nor govern him, nor persuade him, nor
convince him. He has his own positive opinion on all matters; not an
unwise one, usually, for his own ends; and will ask no advice of yours.
He has no work to do--no tyrannical instinct to obey. The earthworm has
his digging; the bee her gathering and building; the spider her cunning
network; the ant her treasury and accounts. All these are comparatively
slaves, or people of vulgar business. But your fly, free in the air,
free in the chamber--a black incar