er, in marble and bronze, nielloed salvers, golden
chasing, laces as from fairy-land, canopies, garments and gems? All
beautiful patents of rank, marks to honor wealthy rank--nothing more,
save that and the imperishable proof of genius, which is ever lovely, as
a slave or free. But where goes the inventive talent now? Beaumarchais
worked for a year to make a watch which only 'the king' could buy. Had
he lived to-day he would have striven to invent some improvement which
should be found in every man's watch. It 'pays better,' in a word, to
invent for the poor many than for the rich few--and invention has found
this out. Something which must be had in every cottage,--soap for the
million, medicine for the masses, cheap churns, cheap clocks, always
something of which one can sell many and much,--such are the objects
which claim the labor of genius now. Fools grieve that Art is dead;
'lives at best only in imitation;' and that we have chanced on a
godless, humdrum, steam and leather age--one of prose and dust, facts
and factories. Sometimes come gasping efforts--sickly self-persuasions
that all is not so bad as it seems. Mr. Slasher of the Sunday paper is
quite certain that the Creek Indian Girl statue is far superior to
anything antique, while Crasher, just back from Europe, shakes his head,
and assures the younger hadjis--expectant that the old masters are old
humbugs, and that it is generally understood to be so now in France--you
can get better pictures at half price any day in the shops. It will not
do. The art of small details, the art of pieces and bits, went out with
the last architecture. It went over to the people, and from them a
higher Art will yet bloom again in a beauty, a freshness, and grandeur
never before dreamed of. It will live again in Nature. For it is towards
Nature that progress tends--towards real beauty, and not towards the
false 'ideal.'

Yet so clearly and beautifully as social progress is defined for us in
history--so indisputably distinct as are the outlines in which it rises
before us, there are no lack of men to believe that humanity was never
so agonized as at present, never so wicked. 'Our cities are more badly
governed than were ever cities before,'--'look at the Lobby'--everything
is bad. Ah, it moves slowly, no doubt, this progress--and yet it does
move. Across rumors and lies and discouraging truths it ever
moves,--moves with the worlds through seas of light, but, unlike the
worlds, goe