of the Connecticut Blue-Laws.  He criticises severely pictures, feeling quite sure that his natural senses are better means of judgment than the rules of connoisseurs,—­not feeling that, to see such objects, mental vision as well as fleshly eyes are needed and that something is aimed at in Art beyond the imitation of the commonest forms of Nature.  This is Jonathan in the sprawling state, the booby truant, not yet aspiring enough to be a good school-boy.  Yet in his folly there is meaning; add thought and culture to his independence, and he will be a man of might:  he is not a creature without hope, like the thick-skinned dandy of the class first specified.

The artistes form a class by themselves.  Yet among them, though seeking special aims by special means, may also be found the lineaments of these two classes, as well as of the third, of which I am now to speak.

This is that of the thinking American,—­a man who, recognizing the immense advantage of being born to a new world and on a virgin soil, yet does not wish one seed from the past to be lost.  He is anxious to gather and carry back with him every plant that will bear a new climate and new culture.  Some will dwindle; others will attain a bloom and stature unknown before.  He wishes to gather them clean, free from noxious insects, and to give them a fair trial in his new world.  And that he may know the conditions under which he may best place them in that new world, he does not neglect to study their history in this.

The history of our planet in some moments seems so painfully mean and little,—­such terrible bafflings and failures to compensate some brilliant successes,—­such a crushing of the mass of men beneath, the feet of a few, and these, too, often the least worthy,—­such a small drop of honey to each cup of gall, and, in many cases, so mingled that it is never one moment in life purely tasted,—­above all, so little achieved for Humanity as a whole, such tides of war and pestilence intervening to blot out the traces of each triumph,—­that no wonder if the strongest soul sometimes pauses aghast; no wonder if the many indolently console themselves with gross joys and frivolous prizes.  Yes! those men are worthy of admiration who can carry this cross faithfully through fifty years; it is a great while for all the agonies that beset a lover of good, a lover of men; it makes a soul worthy of a speedier ascent, a more productive ministry in the next sphere.  Blessed are they who ever keep that portion of pure, generous love with which they began life!  How blessed those who have deepened the fountains, and have enough to spare for the thirst of others!  Some such there are; and, feeling that, with all the excuses for failure, still only the sight of those who triumph, gives a meaning to life or makes its pangs endurable, we must arise and follow.