into the
national consciousness, but its Homer or Dante or Shakespeare has not
appeared--probably cannot appear for a long time to come. That life is
too wide and still too inharmonious for clear expression. Its very
richness postpones the day of its ultimate expression; but when the hour
is ripe it will embody an ideal as significant as any in history, with
illustration more varied and vital. We are still the victims of our
continent; we shall one day be its masters.

One of the oldest drawings in the world is on the side of a cave in
France, and represents a man fleeing naked and defenceless from a great
serpent--man still in bondage to material conditions. One of the most
stirring of modern scenes is that in which Siegfried waits at the mouth
of the cavern--leaves rustling, light shimmering, birds singing about
him. The glory of youth is on him and the beauty of the world about him;
but he cannot understand what the sounds mean. Then comes the struggle,
the victory, the revelation of song and light; and the hero passes
swiftly up the heights, where, encircled with flame, sleeps the soul of
his strength. In some other day, when the continent is tamed and we have
struck to the heart that materialism which is our only real foe, we,
too, shall climb the heights of achievement, and we shall stand face to
face with that ideal which is now so dim and remote. Then comes the poet
of the real new world--the world of opportunity, of sacrifice, of
unselfish freedom of the larger art and diviner life. And when that day
comes and the great poet sings and the great writer speaks, we shall
hear faint and far the sounds of those old voices of New England; not so
vast as the later music, but as pure and harmonious and true. We shall
understand how they made the later music possible; how they have made
possible the fulfilment of the prediction of one of their own number:
between Shakespeare in the cradle and Shakespeare in "Hamlet" there was
needed but an interval of time, and the same sublime condition is all
that lies between the America of toil and the America of art.
[Applause.]

DONALD SAGE MACKAY

THE DUTCH DOMINE

[Speech of Rev. Dr. D. Sage Mackay at the eleventh annual dinner of the
Holland Society of New York, January 15, 1896. The President, Dr. D.
B. St. John Roosa, said in introducing the speaker: "Before I announce
the next toast I want to remark that one of our distinguished
speakers, a Huguenot, sai