with a Gothic church as a make-weight, were balanced in Muses' minds in
comparison with the "Iliad" and the age of Pericles; and again they put
on the rapt look of mystery, but a smile also, and their admiration
and applause were more and more. To England they soon turned, and
contemplated the round, many-colored globe of Shakspeare's works. As
playful swallows sometimes dart round and round a lithe and wondering
wingless animal, so they, admiringly and timidly, attracted, yet
hesitating, delighting in his alertness, but not quite understanding it,
flitted like a troubled and beautiful flock around the great magician of
modern civilization. Their glance became lighter and less intent, as if
they were nearer to knowledge, the pain of perplexity disappeared like a
shadow from their countenances, their plaudits were more unreserved, and
it seemed likely that the high desert of Shakspeare would win for our
new literature a favorable recognition from the aristocratic goddesses
of antiquity. Knowing that Jove had made perfection unattainable by
mortals, they yet found in the chart before them epics, dramas, lyrics,
histories, and philosophies that were no unworthy companions to the
creations of classical genius, and they were jubilant in the triumphs
of a period in which they had been rather ignorantly and ironically
worshipped. Their sitting was long, and their review thorough, yet they
found but one department of modern literature which was regarded with a
distrust that grew to an aversion. The romances, the tales, the stories,
the novels were contemned more and more, from the first of them to the
last. Nothing like them had been known among the glories of Hellenic
literary art, and no Muse now stood forth to be their defender and
patron. Calliope declared that they were not epical, Euterpe and Erato
that they were not lyrical, Melpomene and Thalia that they were neither
tragical nor comical, Clio that they were not historical, Urania that
they were not sublime in conception, Polymnia that they had no stately
or simple charm in execution, and Terpsichore, who had joined with