have withered in the past.

Fictitious reputations may be inflated for a little space; but all the
while the public is slowly making up its mind; and the judgment of the
main body is as trustworthy as it is enduring. 'Robinson Crusoe' and
'Pilgrim's Progress' hold their own generation after generation, altho
the cultivated class did not discover their merits until long after the
plain people had taken them to heart. Cervantes and Shakspere were
widely popular from the start; and appreciative criticism limped lamely
after the approval of the mob. Whatever blunders in belauding, the plain
people may make now and again, in time they come unfailingly to a hearty
appreciation of work that is honest, genuine, and broad in its appeal;
and when once they have laid hold of the real thing they hold fast with
abiding loyalty.


III

As significant as the spread of democracy in the nineteenth century is
the success with which the abstract idea of nationality has exprest
itself in concrete form. Within less than twoscore years Italy has
ceased to be only a geographical expression; and Germany has given
itself boundaries more sharply defined than those claimed for the
fatherland by the martial lyric of a century ago. Hungary has asserted
itself against the Austrians, and Norway against the Swedes; and each by
the stiffening of racial pride has insisted on the recognition of its
national integrity. This is but the accomplishment of an ideal toward
which the western world has been tending since it emerged from the Dark
Ages into the Renascence and since it began to suspect that the Holy
Roman Empire was only the empty shadow of a disestablished realm. In the