very age and body of the time his form and pressure."

This effort to reproduce man in his moods is no mere trick of fancy
carried into execution. It is a part of the character of a strong
nation, and has a wider bearing on national life than perhaps
unthinking people are aware. Mr. Froude, in his survey of early
England, gives it a special place; and I venture to quote his words,
for they carry with them, not only their own lesson, but the authority
of a great name in historical research.

"No genius can dispense with experience; the aberrations of power,
unguided or ill-guided, are ever in proportion to its intensity, and
life is not long enough to recover from inevitable mistakes. Noble
conceptions already existing, and a noble school of execution which
will launch mind and hand at once upon their true courses, are
indispensable to transcendent excellence; and Shakespeare's plays were
as much the offspring of the long generations who had pioneered his
road for him, as the discoveries of Newton were the offspring of those
of Copernicus.

"No great general ever arose out of a nation of cowards; no great
statesman or philosopher out of a nation of fools; no great artist out
of a nation of materialists; no great drama, except when the drama was
the possession of the people. Acting was the especial amusement of the
English, from the palace to the village green. It was the result and
expression of their strong, tranquil possession of their lives, of
their thorough power over themselves, and power over circumstances.
They were troubled with no subjective speculations; no social problems
vexed them with which they were unable to deal; and in the exuberance
of vigor and spirit, they were able, in the strict and literal sense