and sympathetic with the romantic expression of human nature in all its
forms.

The world has unmistakably grown younger again during the last twenty
years, as though--which, indeed, is the fact--it had thrown off an
accumulation of mopishness, shaken itself free from imaginary
middle-aged restrictions and preoccupations. All over the world there is
a wind of youth blowing such as has not freshened the air of time since
the days of Elizabeth. Once more the spring of a new Renaissance of
Human Nature is upon us. It is the fashion to be young, and the age of
romance both for men and women has been indefinitely extended. No one
gives up the game, or is expected to, till he is genuinely tired of
playing it. Mopish conventions are less and less allowed to restrict
that free and joyous play of vitality dear to the modern heart, which is
the essence of all romance. More and more the world is growing to love a
lover, and one has only to read the newspapers to see how sympathetic
are the times to any generous and adventurous display of the passions.

This more humane temper is the result of many causes. The disintegration
of religious superstition, and the substitution in its stead of
spiritual ideals closer to the facts of life, is one of these. All that
was good in Puritanism has been retained by the modern spirit, while
its narrowing and numbing features, its anti-human, self-mortifying,
provincial side have passed or are passing in the regenerating sunlight
of what one might call a spiritual paganism, which conceives of natural
forces and natural laws as inherently pure and mysteriously sacred. Thus
the way of a man with a maid is no longer a shamefaced affair, but it
is more and more realized that in its romance and its multifarious
refinements of development are the "law and the prophets," the "eternal
meanings" of natural religion and social spirituality.