think himself absolved because he does a generous action and
befriends the poor, but let him see whether he so holds his
property that a benefit goes from it to all. A man's diet should
be what is simplest and readiest to be had, because it is so
private a good. His house should be better, because that is for
the use of hundreds, perhaps of thousands, and is the property of
the traveler. But his speech is a perpetual and public
instrument; let that always side with the race and yield neither
a lie nor a sneer. His manners,--let them be hospitable and
civilising, so that no Phidias or Raphael shall have taught
anything better in canvas or stone; and his acts should be
representative of the human race, as one who makes them rich in
his having, and poor in his want.

It requires great courage in a man of letters to handle the
contemporary practical questions; not because he then has all
men for his rivals, but because of the infinite entanglements of
the problem, and the waste of strength in gathering unripe
fruits. The task is superhuman; and the poet knows well that a
little time will do more than the most puissant genius. Time
stills the loud noise of opinions, sinks the small, raises the
great, so that the true emerges without effort and in perfect
harmony to all eyes; but the truth of the present hour, except
in particulars and single relations, is unattainable. Each man
can very well know his own part of duty, if he will; but to
bring out the truth for beauty, and as literature, surmounts the
powers of art. The most elaborate history of today will have the
oddest dislocated look in the next generation. The historian of
today is yet three ages off. The poet cannot descend into the
turbid present without injury to his rarest gifts. Hence that