pproach than we have to
economic freedom. It is not for us, who have allowed our land to be
stolen by squires and then vulgarised by sham squires, to sneer at such
colonists as merely crude and prosaic. They at least have really kept
something of the simplicity and, therefore, the dignity of democracy;
and that democracy may yet save their country even from the calamities
of wealth and science.

But, while these farmers do not need to become industrial in order to
become industrious, they do tend to become industrial in so far as they
become intellectual. Their culture, and to some great extent their
creed, do come along the railroads from the great modern urban centres,
and bring with them a blast of death and a reek of rotting things. It is
that influence that alone prevents the Middle West from progressing
towards the Middle Ages.

For, after all, linked up in a hundred legends of the Middle Ages, may
be found a symbolic pattern of hammers and nails and saws; and there is
no reason why they should not have also sanctified screw-drivers. There
is no reason why the screw-driver that seemed such a trifle to the
author should not have been borne in triumph down Main Street like a
sword of state, in some pageant of the Guild of St. Joseph of the
Carpenters or St. Dunstan of the Smiths. It was the Catholic poetry and
piety that filled common life with something that is lacking in the
worthy and virile democracy of the West. Nor are Americans of
intelligence so ignorant of this as some may suppose. There is an
admirable society called the Mediaevalists in Chicago; whose name and
address will strike many as suggesting a certain struggle of the soul
against the environment. With the national heartiness they blazon their
note-paper with heraldry and the hues of Gothic windows; with the
national high spirits they assume the fancy dress of friars; but any one
who should essay to laugh at them instead of with them would find out
his mistake. For many of them do really know a great deal about
mediaevalism; much more than I do, or most other men brought up on an
island that is crowded with its cathedrals. Something of the same spirit
may be seen in the beautiful new plans and buildings of Yale,
deliberately modelled not on classical harmony but on Gothic
irregularity and surprise. The grace and energy of the mediaeval
architecture resurrected by a man like Mr. R. A. Cram of Boston has
behind it not merely artistic but historical