Not only, however, has modern science thus put itself at the service of romance, by supplying it with its various magic machinery of communication, but modern thought—­that much maligned bugbear of timorous minds—­has generated an atmosphere increasingly favourable to and sympathetic with the romantic expression of human nature in all its forms.

The world has unmistakably grown younger again during the last twenty years, as though—­which, indeed, is the fact—­it had thrown off an accumulation of mopishness, shaken itself free from imaginary middle-aged restrictions and preoccupations.  All over the world there is a wind of youth blowing such as has not freshened the air of time since the days of Elizabeth.  Once more the spring of a new Renaissance of Human Nature is upon us.  It is the fashion to be young, and the age of romance both for men and women has been indefinitely extended.  No one gives up the game, or is expected to, till he is genuinely tired of playing it.  Mopish conventions are less and less allowed to restrict that free and joyous play of vitality dear to the modern heart, which is the essence of all romance.  More and more the world is growing to love a lover, and one has only to read the newspapers to see how sympathetic are the times to any generous and adventurous display of the passions.

This more humane temper is the result of many causes.  The disintegration of religious superstition, and the substitution in its stead of spiritual ideals closer to the facts of life, is one of these.  All that was good in Puritanism has been retained by the modern spirit, while its narrowing and numbing features, its anti-human, self-mortifying, provincial side have passed or are passing in the regenerating sunlight of what one might call a spiritual paganism, which conceives of natural forces and natural laws as inherently pure and mysteriously sacred.  Thus the way of a man with a maid is no longer a shamefaced affair, but it is more and more realized that in its romance and its multifarious refinements of development are the “law and the prophets,” the “eternal meanings” of natural religion and social spirituality.

Then, too, the spread of democracy, resulting in the breaking down of caste barriers, is all to the good of romance.  Swiftly and surely Guelph and Ghibelline and break-neck orchard walls are passing away.  If Romeo and Juliet make a tragedy of it nowadays, they have only to blame their own mismanagement, for the world is with them as it has never been before, and all sensible fathers and mothers know it.

Again, the freer intercourse between the sexes tends incalculably to smooth that course of true love once so proverbially rough, but now indeed in danger of being made too unexcitingly smooth.  Yet if, as a result, certain old combinations of romance are becoming obsolete, new ones, no less picturesque, and even more vital in their drama, are being evolved every day by the new conditions.  Those very inroads