world itself, and the word "human" is filled with new meaning.
Our ideals broaden to suit the wide day in which we live. We
crave, not cloistered virtue--it is impossible any longer to
keep the cloister--but a robust spirit that shall take the air
in the great world, know men in all their kinds, choose its way
amid the bustle with all self-possession, with wise genuineness,
in calmness, and yet with the quick eye of interest and the quick
pulse of power. It is again a day for Shakespeare's spirit--a
day more various, more ardent, more provoking to valor and every
large design, even than "the spacious times of great Elizabeth,"
when all the world seemed new; and if we cannot find another
bard, come out of a new Warwickshire, to hold once more the
mirror up to nature, it will not be because the stage is not set
for him. The time is such an one as he might rejoice to look
upon; and if we would serve it as it should be served, we should
seek to be human after his wide-eyed sort. The serenity of power;
the naturalness that is nature's poise and mark of genuineness;
the unsleeping interest in all affairs, all fancies, all things
believed or done; the catholic understanding, tolerance,
enjoyment, of all classes and conditions of men; the conceiving
imagination, the planning purpose, the creating thought, the
wholesome, laughing humor, the quiet insight, the universal
coinage of the brain--are not these the marvelous gifts and
qualities we mark in Shakespeare when we call him the greatest
among men? And shall not these rounded and perfect powers serve
us as our ideal of what it is to be a finished human being?

We live for our own age--an age like Shakespeare's, when an old
world is passing away, a new world coming in--an age of new
speculation and every new adventure of the mind; a full stage, an