soul. The very children would upbraid the wretched individual who should
endeavor to take life and the world as w what we might naturally suppose
them meant for--a place and opportunity for enjoyment.

It is the iron rule in our day to require an object and a purpose in
life. It makes us all parts of a complicated scheme of progress, which
can only result in our arrival at a colder and drearier region than
we were born in. It insists upon everybody's adding somewhat--a mite,
perhaps, but earned by incessant effort--to an accumulated pile of
usefulness, of which the only use will be, to burden our posterity with
even heavier thoughts and more inordinate labor than our own. No life
now wanders like an unfettered stream; there is a mill-wheel for the
tiniest rivulet to turn. We go all wrong, by too strenuous a resolution
to go all right.

Therefore it was--so, at least, the sculptor thought, although partly
suspicious of Donatello's darker misfortune--that the young Count found
it impossible nowadays to be what his forefathers had been. He could
not live their healthy life of animal spirits, in their sympathy with
nature, and brotherhood with all that breathed around them. Nature, in
beast, fowl, and tree, and earth, flood, and sky, is what it was of old;
but sin, care, and self-consciousness have set the human portion of the
world askew; and thus the simplest character is ever the soonest to go
astray.

"At any rate, Tomaso," said Kenyon, doing his best to comfort the old
man, "let us hope that your young lord will still enjoy himself at
vintage time. By the aspect of the vineyard, I judge that this will be
a famous year for the golden wine of Monte Beni. As long as your grapes
produce that admirable liquor, sad as you think the world, neither the