confusion; no guilt and no virtue, but a droll bedlam, where everybody believes only after his humor, and the actors and spectators have no conscience or reflection, no police, no foot-rule, no sanity, nothing but whim and whim creative.'

Meantime far be from me the impatience which cannot brook the supernatural, the vast; far be from me the lust of explaining away all which appeals to the imagination, and the great presentiments which haunt us. Willingly I too say, Hail! to the unknown awful powers which transcend the ken of the understanding. And the attraction which this topic has had for me and which induces me to unfold its parts before you is precisely because I think the numberless forms in which this superstition has reappeared

in

every time and every people indicates the inextinguishableness of wonder in man; betrays his conviction that behind all your explanations is a vast and potent and living Nature, inexhaustible and sublime, which you cannot explain. He is sure no book, no man has told him all. He is sure the great Instinct, the circumambient soul which flows into him as into all, and is his life, has not been searched. He is sure that intimate relations subsist between his character and

his fortunes, between him and his world; and until he can adequately tell them he will tell them wildly and fabulously. Demonology is the shde of Theology.'

e world is an omen and a sign. Why look so wistfully in a corner? Man is the Image of God. Why run after a ghost or a dream? The voice of divination resounds everywhere and runs to waste unheard, unregarded, as the mountains echo with the bleatings of cattle.2

II

ARISTOCRACY

"BUT for ye speken of such gentillesse
As is descended out of old richesse,
That therfore shullen ye be gentilmen,
Such arrogance n' is not worth a hen.
Look who that is most virtuous alway,
Prive and apert, and most entendeth aye
To do the gentil dedés that he can,
And take him for the greatest gentilman.

"Take fire and beare it into the derkest hous
Betwixt this and the mount of Caucasus
And let men shut the dorés, and go thenne,
Yet wol the fire as faire lie and brenne
As twenty thousand men might it behold;
His office natural ay wol it hold,
Up peril of my lif, til that it die.

"Here may ye see wel, how that genterie Is not annexed to possession,

Sith folk ne don their operation

Alway, as doth the fire, lo, in his kind,
For God it wot, men may full often find
A lorde's son do shame and vilanie.

And he that wol have prize of his genterie,
For he was boren of a gentil house,
And had his elders noble and virtuous,

And n' ill hinselven do no gentil dedes,
Ne folwe his gentil auncestrie, that dead is,
He n' is not gentil, be he duke or erl;
For vilaines' sinful dedés make a churl.
Than cometh our very gentillesse of grace,
It was no thing bequethed us with our place."
CHAUCER, "The Knighte's Tale."

ARISTOCRACY

HERE is an attractive topic, which never

THE

goes out of vogue and is impertinent in no community, the permanent traits of the Aristocracy. It is an interest of the human race, and, as I look at it, inevitable, sacred and to be found in every country and in every company of men. My concern with it is that concern which all well-disposed persons will feel, that there should be model men,- true instead of spurious pictures of excellence, and, if possible, living standards.

I observe that the word gentleman is gladly heard in all companies; that the cogent motive with the best young men who are revolving plans and forming resolutions for the future, is the spirit of honor, the wish to be gentlemen. They do not yet covet political power, nor any exuberance of wealth, wealth that costs too much; nor do they wish to be saints; for fear of partialism; but the middle term, the reconciling element, the success of the manly character, they find in the idea of gentleman. It is not to be a man of rank, but a man of honor, accomplished in all arts and generosities, which seems to them