eautifully, but the master aims to see
truly and to feel vitally. Beauty follows him, and is never followed by
him.

Nature is beautiful because she is something else first, yes, and last,
too, and all the while. Whitman's work is baptized in the spirit of the
whole, and its health and sweetness in this respect, when compared with
the over-refined artistic works, is like that of a laborer in the fields
compared with the pale dyspeptic ennuye.

VII

Whitman's ideal is undoubtedly much larger, coarser, stronger--much more
racy and democratic--than the ideal we are familiar with in current
literature, and upon which our culture is largely based. He applies the
democratic spirit not only to the material of poetry,--excluding all the
old stock themes of love and war, lords and ladies, myths and fairies and
legends, etc.,--but he applies it to the form as well, excluding rhyme and
measure and all the conventional verse architecture. His work stands or it
falls upon its inherent, its intrinsic qualities, the measure of life or
power which it holds. This ideal was neither the scholar nor the priest,
nor any type of the genteel or exceptionally favored or cultivated. His
influence does not make for any form of depleted, indoor, over-refined or
extra-cultured humanity. The spirit of his work transferred to practice
begets a life full and strong on all sides, affectionate, magnetic,
tolerant, spiritual, bold with the flavor and quality of simple,
healthful, open-air humanity. He opposes culture and refinement only as he
opposes that which weakens, drains, emasculates, and tends to beget a
scoffing, carping, hypercritical class. The culture of life, of nature,
and that which flows from the exercise of the manly instincts and
affections, is the culture implied by "Leaves of Grass." The democratic
spirit is undoubtedly more or less jealous of the refinements of our
artificial culture and of the daintiness and aloofness of our literature.
The people look askance at men who are above them without being of them,
who have dropped the traits and attractions which they share with
unlettered humanity. Franklin and Lincoln are closer akin to this spirit,
and hence more in favor with it, than a Jefferson or a Sumner.

Whitman might be called the poet of the absolute, the unconditioned. His
work is launched at a farther remove from our arts, conventions, usages,
civilization, and all the artificial elements that modify and enter into
our