Is there anything more unsatisfactory than a perfect house, perfect grounds, perfect gardens, art and nature brought into the most absolute harmony of taste and culture?  What more can a man do with it?  What satisfaction has a man in it if he really gets to the end of his power to improve it?  There have been such nearly ideal places, and how strong nature, always working against man and in the interest of untamed wildness, likes to riot in them and reduce them to picturesque destruction!  And what sweet sadness, pathos, romantic suggestion, the human mind finds in such a ruin!  And a society that has attained its end in all possible culture, entire refinement in manners, in tastes, in the art of elegant intellectual and luxurious living—­is there nothing pathetic in that?  Where is the primeval, heroic force that made the joy of living in the rough old uncivilized days?  Even throw in goodness, a certain amount of altruism, gentleness, warm interest in unfortunate humanity—­is the situation much improved?  London is probably the most civilized centre the world has ever seen; there are gathered more of the elements of that which we reckon the best.  Where in history, unless some one puts in a claim for the Frenchman, shall we find a Man so nearly approaching the standard we have set up of civilization as the Englishman, refined by inheritance and tradition, educated almost beyond the disturbance of enthusiasm, and cultivated beyond the chance of surprise?  We are speaking of the highest type in manner, information, training, in the acquisition of what the world has to give.  Could these men have conquered the world?  Is it possible that our highest civilization has lost something of the rough and admirable element that we admire in the heroes of Homer and of Elizabeth?  What is this London, the most civilized city ever known?  Why, a considerable part of its population is more barbarous, more hopelessly barbarous, than any wild race we know, because they are the barbarians of civilization, the refuse and slag of it, if we dare say that of any humanity.  More hopeless, because the virility of savagery has measurably gone out of it.  We can do something with a degraded race of savages, if it has any stamina in it.  What can be done with those who are described as “East-Londoners”?

Every great city has enough of the same element.  Is this an accident, or is it a necessity of the refinement that we insist on calling civilization?  We are always sending out missionaries to savage or perverted nations, we are always sending out emigrants to occupy and reduce to order neglected territory.  This is our main business.  How would it be if this business were really accomplished, and there were no more peoples to teach our way of life to, and no more territory to bring under productive cultivation?  Without the necessity of putting forth this energy, a survival of the original force in man, how long would our civilization last?  In a word, if the world