might well hope to act upon this victoriously by his spirit, might hope
to transmute it, as indeed he did, into melodious and enduring human
suggestion. Would it have been all the same, had he lived in our
type-setting modern world, with its multitudinous knowledges, its
aroused conscience, its spurred and yet thwarted sympathies, its new
incitements to egotism also, and new tools and appliances for egotism
to use,--placed, as it were, in the focus of a vast whispering-gallery,
where all the sounds of heaven and earth came crowding, contending,
incessant upon his ear? One sees at a glance how the serious thought and
poetry of Greece cling to a few master facts, not being compelled to
fight always with the many-headed monster of detail; and this suggests
to me that our literature may fall short of Grecian amplitude, depth,
and simplicity, not wholly from inferiority of power, but from
complications appertaining to our position.

The problem of our time is, How to digest and assimilate the Newspaper?
To complain of it, to desire its abolition, is an anachronism of the
will: it is to complain that time proceeds, and that events follow each
other in due sequence. It is hardly too bold to say that the newspaper
_is_ the modern world, as distinct from the antique and the mediaeval.
It represents, by its advent, that epoch in human history wherein
each man must begin, in proportion to his capability of sympathy and
consideration, to collate his private thoughts, fortunes, interests with
those of the human race at large. We are now in the crude openings of
this epoch, fevered by its incidents and demands; and one of its tokens
is a general exhaustion of the nervous system and failure of health,
both here and in Europe,--those of most sensitive spirit, and least
retired and sheltered from the impressions of the time, suffering most.
All this will end, _must_ end, victoriously. In the mean time can we not
somewhat adjust ourselves to this new condition?