Nature has not lost one ringlet of her beauty, one
impulse of resistance and valor. From the necessity of loving none
are exempt, and he that loves must utter his desires. A charm as
radiant as beauty ever beamed, a love that fainteth at the sight of
its object, is new to-day.
"The world does not run smoother than of old,
There are sad haps that must be told."
Man is not so far lost but that he suffers ever the great
Discontent, which is the elegy of his loss and the prediction of his
recovery. In the gay saloon he laments that these figures are not
what Raphael and Guercino painted. Withered though he stand and
trifler though he be, the august spirit of the world looks out from
his eyes. In his heart he knows the ache of spiritual pain, and his
thought can animate the sea and land. What then shall hinder the
Genius of the time from speaking its thought? It cannot be silent,
if it would. It will write in a higher spirit, and a wider
knowledge, and with a grander practical aim, than ever yet guided the
pen of poet. It will write the annals of a changed world, and record
the descent of principles into practice, of love into Government, of
love into Trade.
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