nto a make-believe Roman. At the period when
England produced its greatest poets, we find exactly the reverse of
this, and we are thankful that the man who made the monument of Lord
Bacon had genius to copy every button of his dress, everything down to
the rosettes on his shoes, and then to write under his statue, "Thus sat
Francis Bacon"--not "Cneius Pompeius"--"Viscount Verulam." Those men had
faith even in their own shoe-strings.

After all, how is our poor scapegoat of a nineteenth century to blame?
Why, for not being the seventeenth, to be sure! It is always raining
opportunity, but it seems it was only the men two hundred years ago who
were intelligent enough not to hold their cups bottom-up. We are like
beggars who think if a piece of gold drop into their palm it must be
counterfeit, and would rather change it for the smooth-worn piece of
familiar copper. And so, as we stand in our mendicancy by the wayside,
Time tosses carefully the great golden to-day into our hats, and we turn
it over grumblingly and suspiciously, and are pleasantly surprised at
finding that we can exchange it for beef and potatoes. Till Dante's time
the Italian poets thought no language good enough to put their nothings
into but Latin,--and indeed a dead tongue was the best for dead
thoughts,--but Dante found the common speech of Florence, in which men
bargained and scolded and made love, good enough for him, and out of the
world around him made a poem such as no Roman ever sang.

In our day, it is said despairingly, the understanding reigns
triumphant: it is the age of common sense. If this be so, the wisest way
would be to accept it manfully. But, after all, what is the meaning of
it? Looking at the matter superficially, one would say that a striking
difference between our science and that of the world's gray fathers is
that there is every day less and less of the element of wonder in it.
What they saw written in light upon the great arch of heaven, and, by a
magnificent reach of sympathy, of which we are incapable, associated
with the fall of monarchs and the fate of man, is for us only a
professor, a piece of chalk, and a blackboard. The solemn and
unapproachable skies we have vulgarized; we have peeped and botanized
among the flowers of light, pulled off every petal, fumbled in every
calyx, and reduced them to the bare stem of order and class. The stars
can no longer maintain their divine reserves, but whenever there is a
conjunction an