relation to human life insures its welcome ever after as a true representation of human nature; and that consequently the most remunerative method of studying a literature is to study the people for whom it was produced.  Illustrations of this were drawn from the Greek, the French, and the English literatures.  This study always throws a flood of light upon the meaning of the text of an old author, the same light that the reader unconsciously has upon contemporary pages dealing with the life with which he is familiar.  The reader can test this by taking up his Shakespeare after a thorough investigation of the customs, manners, and popular life of the Elizabethan period.  Of course the converse is true that good literature is an open door into the life and mode of thought of the time and place where it originated.

THE RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE

I hade a vision once—­you may all have had a like one—­of the stream of time flowing through a limitless land.  Along its banks sprang up in succession the generations of man.  They did not move with the stream-they lived their lives and sank away; and always below them new generations appeared, to play their brief parts in what is called history—­the sequence of human actions.  The stream flowed on, opening for itself forever a way through the land.  I saw that these successive dwellers on the stream were busy in constructing and setting afloat vessels of various size and form and rig—­arks, galleys, galleons, sloops, brigs, boats propelled by oars, by sails, by steam.  I saw the anxiety with which each builder launched his venture, and watched its performance and progress.  The anxiety was to invent and launch something that should float on to the generations to come, and carry the name of the builder and the fame of his generation.  It was almost pathetic, these puny efforts, because faith always sprang afresh in the success of each new venture.  Many of the vessels could scarcely be said to be launched at all; they sank like lead, close to the shore.  Others floated out for a time, and then, struck by a flaw in the wind, heeled over and disappeared.  Some, not well put together, broke into fragments in the bufleting of the waves.  Others danced on the flood, taking the sun on their sails, and went away with good promise of a long voyage.  But only a few floated for any length of time, and still fewer were ever seen by the generation succeeding that which launched them.  The shores of the stream were strewn with wrecks; there lay bleaching in the sand the ribs of many a once gallant craft.