and enlightened spirit; and an art will arise commensurate with this new
and loftier revelation. If there is no God, it is difficult to see how art
can have the face to show herself any more. There is no place for her in
the Religion of Humanity; to be true and living she can be nothing which
it has thus far entered into the heart of man to call beautiful; and she
could only serve to remind us of certain vague longings and aspirations
now proved to be as false as they were vain. Art is not an orchid: it
cannot grow in the air. Unless its root can be traced as deep down as
Yggdrasil, it will wither and vanish, and be forgotten as it ought to be;
and as for the cowslip by the river's brim, a yellow cowslip it shall be,
and nothing more; and the light that never was on sea or land shall be
permanently extinguished, in the interests of common sense and economy,
and (what is least inviting of all to the unregenerate mind) we shall
speedily get rid of the notion that we have lost anything worth
preserving.

This, however, is only what may be, and our concern at present is with
things as they are. It has been observed that American writers have shown
themselves more susceptible of the new influences than most others, partly
no doubt from a natural sensitiveness of organization, but in some measure
also because there are with us no ruts and fetters of old tradition from
which we must emancipate ourselves before adopting anything new. We have
no past, in the European sense, and so are ready for whatever the present
or the future may have to suggest. Nevertheless, the novelist who, in a
larger degree than any other, seems to be the literary parent of our own
best men of fiction, is himself not an American, nor even an Englishman,
but a Russian--Turguenieff. His series of extraordinary novels, translated
into English and French, is altogether the most important fact in the
literature of fiction of the last twelve years. To read his books you
would scarcely imagine that their author could have had any knowledge of