ng--that influence which the age, without
defining, still declares is essential to poetry. In Science, in
Humanity, and in perfecting human ties and interests by the influence of
love, there exists a romance which is exquisitely fascinating, and which
lends itself to tenderer and more graceful dreams than Trouveur or
Minnesinger _of any age_ ever knew--dreams the more delightful because
they will not fade away with the mists of morning, but be fulfilled in
clear sunlight, line by line, before man.

It is not difficult to prove what I have here asserted of this tendency
toward the Real in modern literature and art. Within twenty, nay, within
ten years, men of genius have abandoned the Supernatural and the Gothic
as affording fit themes for creative efforts. That unfortunate creature
the Ghost--especially the Ghost in Armor--as well as the Historical or
Sensational personages who live only in the superlative--are at present
in general demand only by that harmless class who read 'for
entertainment,' and even they are beginning to ungratefully mock their
old friends. It is not difficult to foresee that the Romance so dear to
the last generation will soon become the exclusive heritage of the
vulgar. Meanwhile, genial sketches of fresh, unaffected Nature, draughts
from real life, are beginning to be loved with keen zest. What novels
are so successful as those in which the writer has truthfully mirrored
the heart or the home? What pictures are so loved as those which set
before us the Real, or, rather, the Ideal in its true meaning--that of
the perfected essence of the Real?

When this tendency shall have fairly placed man on the right road--when
we shall have learned to follow and set forth Nature as she is, in
spirit and in truth, the great cherishing mother, ever young, ever
joyous, of all beauty and all pleasure, then we may anticipate the last
and greatest era of human culture. Then we may hope for a more than
Greek art--an art freed from every strain of oppression and injustice.
To effect this we must, however, do what the earliest founders of poetry
find mythology did: search Nature closely, bear constantly in mind her
one great principle of potent Being, continually displaying itself in
all things as life and death, mutually creating each other, and acting
in all organic life by the mystery of Love, Then, while establishing
those affinities and correspondences between natural objects which
constitute Poetry, let it be