Dr. Milman, in his great _History of Christianity_, observes that
no religious revolution has ever been successful which has commenced
with the Government. Such revolutions have ever begun in the middle or
lower orders of society. The same is true of other branches of the
intellectual life of man. Neither Governments nor academies and
schools can ever originate anything new in art, politics, language.
All growth springs from the unsophisticated masses; growth is organic,
from below. The blossom must fade, and the seed fall to the earth
before it can bring forth new life. Academical training concerns
itself with the models of the past; its useful work consists in
criticizing, purifying, directing the raw material into something
higher, better, more useful than it was in the rough, as the gardener
produces new and better varieties; but it can no more originate than
the gardener can create new plants; and in perfecting it often
emasculates.

The reason why the Elizabethan drama is so infinitely more impressive
than the technically more perfect drama of the Restoration is that it
is steeped in nature and reality, whereas the later stage represents
men and women under the fashionable conventions of polite society.
"The people" indeed includes high as well as low, but none but the
very strongest natures--a Shakespeare, a Beethoven, a Goethe--can
endure the stress of Court favour. Where the national nourishment from
below is deficient, an elegant artificial semblance may indeed be
forced; but it is felt to be wanting in root and to lack that
spontaneity and universality which are the very life's breath of all
true art and specially mark the art of the people.

In England culture has severed itself entirely from popular life. The
very word "popular," unlike the German _volksthuemlich_, carries