of cultured listlessness or philosophic despondency he positively irritates you by giving "himself the benefit of the doubt," and insisting that he is happy unless he is very sure indeed of the contrary (Pr., p. 92), it may perhaps be a pleasant thought to you that he at times felt "these modern tendencies to turn

every thing to pathos, ennui, morbidity, dissatisfaction, death." (Pr., p. 109.) Thirty years of ill health could not break his spirit. He insisted that "in the fact of life itself" we should "discover and achieve happiness." (Pr., p. 249.)

Do you say, O all this optimism would be well in Millennial days, not now? Well, he will tell you it is good to live in the future. It is magnificent to have occasion for the "afflatus" to fall on you, it is glorious to hear the "holy ghost" speak within, to have the "prophetic vision." (Pr., p. 227.)

If you are angered by his self-sufficiency, and fancy he means really to repel you, it will be well to remember that "though the live-oak glistens" solitary, Whitman knows very well that he at all events "could not without a friend, a lover near." (p. 106.) If you wish he had been a greater scholar, like yourself very learned, incapable of technical blunders even when off his guard, you will be apt to forgive him when you consider how on the occasion of his remark that Browning "must be deeply studied out" and "quite certainly repays the trouble," he frankly admitted that he for his part was "too old and indolent,” that he could not "study" and "in fact never" had "studied." (Pr., p. 483.)

After all Whitman is what he is. If you want him to take you by the hand he will do it in his own

hearty, rough way. He will not shake your arm out of joint, but no one can promise that your monocle will not be dislodged from its supercilious place;— and who would venture his reputation as a prophet by assuring you that your immaculate shirt bosom will suffer no rumples if he should happen to put his big brawny arms about you?

In conclusion, you may ask me, why can I not get the same thing Whitman gives from another—say, Emerson or Browning? Well, perhaps you can. The fact however is that Emerson's words sound impersonal, abstract and cold-vague, unreal-while there is no doubt you shall have to understand Whitman. He drives his ideas like wedges of live lightning into your soul. No shields or helmets or customary convention will protect it. You may walk with Browning (I say you may) and take an absurd delight in his difficulties as such, you may fancy all he says has reference only to this man or that woman-you may apply the sermon to your neighbor in the pew and remain Pharisaically content-you may look upon Browning's poetry only as an arsenal for controversial weapons, and use Elvire's husband's logic to justify your marital irregularities, or Bishop Blougram's arguments to fortify your soul in lucrative deceit-(I have kuown a bishop to quote his sophistries copiously, elaborately, in a defense of his own theological position!)-but one thing is very sure, Whitman's Message is to you. It is positively you he means. There is no doubt about this. When he lashes, it is you are hurt. When he mocks, it is you who feel rebuked. When he exults, it is you who are uplifted from the slough of your despond. When you try to pose as virtuous, it is you

he will denounce. If you are dealing in "doubts, swervings," and subtle "doublings upon" yourself "typical of our age" (Pr., p. 403), it is out of you he will "shame silliness" (p. 38) and make you very sure of yourself. If you are thinking of what a poor chance in life you have, he will tell you it is just what you make of it, and that you can be a hero, "a God" if you please. Now all this is said to you-unmistakably to you-and there is no possible evasion! How then can you afford to wrap yourself in a cloak of refined prejudices?

Stranger, if you passing meet me and desire to speak to me, why should you not speak to me?

And why should I not speak to you?

(p. 18.)

DIAGRAM OF A SECTION OF THE ROSE OF THE BLESSED, SHOWING THE CONSTITUENT ELEMENTS OF IDEAL WOMANHOOD.

APPENDIX 2.

"WORDSWORTH'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY."

(Note to page 112 of England's Agnostic Poets.)

For comparison with Swinburne's "Philosophy" let us take a cursory glance at Wordsworth's (Cf. particularly, Tintern Abbey and Ode to Duty). Passionate pleasure is dissatisfying short of its limit, and at its limit sets in the reaction of pain. Social joys depend on a shifting ever self-readjusting world of men; all real relations are therefore subject to strain. Only two things abide with man himself, his world of thought; nature, his world of "eye and ear." Out of one of these, or both, must he extract his life's happiness. No perverse contempt is felt for "the grand elementary principle of pleasure" by which man "knows, and feels, and lives, and moves." Sympathy with pain itself "is produced and carried on by subtle combinations with pleasure." (Preface to Lyrical Ballads.) His mission as a Poet is to increase man's world of joyous experience. He could do so by giving us an imaginative taste of what we would, but can not, experience— extending our being fictitiously, and after the poem is over, allowing us to shrink again to our ordinary dimensions-to feel perhaps the ache of discontent, and the fury of rebellion. He prefers to set before us always what we can but will not experience (i. e., can not because we will not), either from ignorance or perversity; so, he extends the reader's being fictitiously, only to extend it really, perhaps, for the reader need not shrink. If he will keep his senses open (not clogged by prejudgments of the mind) "in a wise passiveness," and clear (not covered with dulling rust of previous experience of sense, so that the memory of previous experiences precedes the new sensation instead of following it); if, in a word, he will "keep the young lamb's heart among the fullgrown flocks," all that Wordsworth's poems offer him he can afterward find in nature about him wherever he happens to be.

Wordsworth's peculiar mission, then, was to make men realize how much normal wholesome pleasure is within their reach day by day, if they will only possess their world of thought and their world of "eye and ear." It is with the latter we should begin: (1) Sounds, colors, perspectives, perfumes, etc., etc., are a source of vital joy accessible to almost all, quickening, stimulating, liable to no reaction, quiet, serene, incapable of being pushed to