mocracy in the new ages of a humaner world.

It will be plain to those who have read what has elsewhere been said of
the ideal life, that democracy is for the nation a true embodiment of
that life, and wears its characteristics upon its sleeve. In it the
individual mingles with the mass, and becomes one with mankind, and
mankind itself sums the totality of individual good in a well-nigh
perfect way. In it there is the slow embodiment of a future nobly
conceived and brought into existence on an ideal basis of the best that
is, from age to age, in man's power. It includes the universal wisdom,
the reach of thought and aspiration, by virtue of which men climb, and
here manhood climbs. It knows no limit; it rejects no man who wears the
form Christ wore; it receives all into its benediction. Through
democracy, more readily and more plainly than through any other system
of government or conception of man's nature and destiny, the best of men
may blend with his race, and store in their common life the energies of
his own soul, looking for as much aid as he may give. Democracy, as
elsewhere has been said, is the earthly hope of men; and they who stand
apart, in fancied superiority to mankind, which is by creation equal in
destiny, and in fact equal in the larger part of human nature, however
obstructed by time and circumstance, are foolish withdrawers from the
ways of life. On the battle-field or in the senate, or in the humblest
cabin of the West, to lead an American life is to join heart and soul in
this cause.

THE RIDE

Mystery is the natural habitat of the soul. It is the child's element,
though he sees it not; for, year by year, acquiring the solid and
palpable, the visible and audible, the things of mortal life, he lives
in horizons of the senses, and though grown a youth he still looks
intellectually for things definite and clear. Education in general
through its whole period induces the contempt of all else, impressing
almost universally the positive element in life, whose realm in early
years at least is sensual. So it was with me: the mind's eye saw all
that was or might be in an atmosphere of scepticism, as my bodily eye
beheld the world washed in colour. Yet the habitual sense of mystery in
man's life is a measure of wisdom in the man; and, at last, if the mind
be open and turn upon the poles of truth, whether in the sage's
knowledge or the poet's emotion or such common experience of the world
as all hav