joy are the only moral agents. Worship is immortal cheer. The Greeks
rebuke us with their sacred festivals and games: why should we not hunt
every evil as we follow gayly the buffalo and bear? Virtue cannot be
wrinkled and sad; Virtue is a joy of the Right added to our earliest
joy,--is refreshment and health, not fever. The Etruscan are right
religious sculptures: the body will be more, not less, when the soul is
most; for the body is created and perfected, not devoured by the soul.
In another Eden the curves of grace and power will reappear; every
wrinkle will be counted sin; goodness will be sap and blood, a growth of
grapes and roses, a sacrament of energy and content.

If there be great wrongs, we cannot distrust the Maker, and postpone the
security of the soul. Impatience is a wrong as great as any. Love and
trust are remedies for wrong. Music is our cure for insanity, and I
remember that incantation of fair reasons which Plato prescribed. What
gain is in scolding and knitting the brows? The blue sky, the bright
cloud, the star of night, the star of day, every creature is in its
smiling place a protest of the universe against our hasty method of
counter-working wrong with wrong. Let loose the Right. Go forward with
martial music; never await or seek, but carry victory and win every
battle in the organization of your band. Hear Beethoven:--"Nor do I fear
for my works. No evil can befall them, and whosoever shall understand
them shall be free from all such misery as burdens mankind."

From this security in the lap of Nature, this nest in the grass, we rise
easily to every height. Gladness becomes uncontainable, a pain of
fulness, for which, after all effort, there is no complete relief; for
language breaks under it in delivery, and Art falls to the ground. The
psalm of David, the statue of Angelo, the chorus of Handel, are
inarticulate cries. These men have not justified to us their confidence.