arning with a present purpose.

It is unnecessary for me to say that all this is only from the
unsympathetic and worldly side. I should think myself a criminal if I
said anything to chill the enthusiasm of the young scholar, or to dash
with any skepticism his longing and his hope. He has chosen the highest.
His beautiful faith and his aspiration are the light of life. Without his
fresh enthusiasm and his gallant devotion to learning, to art, to
culture, the world would be dreary enough. Through him comes the
ever-springing inspiration in affairs. Baffled at every turn and driven
defeated from a hundred fields, he carries victory in himself. He belongs
to a great and immortal army. Let him not be discouraged at his apparent
little influence, even though every sally of every young life may seem
like a forlorn hope. No man can see the whole of the battle. It must
needs be that regiment after regiment, trained, accomplished, gay, and
high with hope, shall be sent into the field, marching on, into the
smoke, into the fire, and be swept away. The battle swallows them, one
after the other, and the foe is yet unyielding, and the ever-remorseless
trumpet calls for more and more. But not in vain, for some day, and every
day, along the line, there is a cry, "They fly! they fly!" and the whole
army advances, and the flag is planted on an ancient fortress where it
never waved before. And, even if you never see this, better than
inglorious camp-following is it to go in with the wasting regiment; to
carry the colors up the slope of the enemy's works, though the next
moment you fall and find a grave at the foot of the glacis.

What are the relations of culture to common life, of the scholar to the
day-laborer? What is the value of this vast accumulation of higher
learning, what is its point of contact with the mass of humanity, that
toils and eats and sleeps and reproduces itself and dies, generation
after generation, in an unvarying round, on an unvarying level? We have
had discussed lately the relation of culture to religion. Mr. Froude,
with a singular, reactionary ingenuity, has sought to prove that the
progress of the century, so-called, with all its material alleviations,
has done little in regard to a happy life, to the pleasure of existence,
for the average individual Englishman. Into neither of these inquiries do
I purpose to enter; but we may not unprofitably turn our attention to a
subject closely connected with both of them