and revolt him; as, indeed,
such things need to be judged of by another standard than that of the
Connecticut Blue-Laws. He criticises severely pictures, feeling quite
sure that his natural senses are better means of judgment than the
rules of connoisseurs,--not feeling that, to see such objects, mental
vision as well as fleshly eyes are needed and that something is aimed
at in Art beyond the imitation of the commonest forms of Nature. This
is Jonathan in the sprawling state, the booby truant, not yet aspiring
enough to be a good school-boy. Yet in his folly there is meaning;
add thought and culture to his independence, and he will be a man of
might: he is not a creature without hope, like the thick-skinned dandy
of the class first specified.

The artistes form a class by themselves. Yet among them, though
seeking special aims by special means, may also be found the
lineaments of these two classes, as well as of the third, of which I
am now to speak.

This is that of the thinking American,--a man who, recognizing the
immense advantage of being born to a new world and on a virgin soil,
yet does not wish one seed from the past to be lost. He is anxious
to gather and carry back with him every plant that will bear a new
climate and new culture. Some will dwindle; others will attain a bloom
and stature unknown before. He wishes to gather them clean, free from
noxious insects, and to give them a fair trial in his new world. And
that he may know the conditions under which he may best place them in
that new world, he does not neglect to study their history in this.

The history of our planet in some moments seems so painfully mean
and little,--such terrible bafflings and failures to compensate some
brilliant successes,--such a crushing of the mass of men beneath, the
feet of a few, and these, too, often the least worthy,--such a small
drop of honey to each cup of gall, and, in many cases, so mingled that
it is never one moment in life purely tasted,--above all, so little
achieved for Humanity as a whole, such tides of war and pestilence
intervening to blot out the traces of each triumph,--that no wonder
if the strongest soul sometimes pauses aghast; no wonder if the many
indolently console themselves with gross joys and frivolous prizes.
Yes! those men _are_ worthy of admiration who can carry this cross
faithfully through fifty years; it is a great while for all the
agonies that beset a lover of good, a lover of men; it make