It may not be an ideal of that which is
perfect, but it moves at least upon an upland level where the air
is sweet; it holds an image of man erect and constant, going
abroad with undaunted steps, looking with frank and open gaze
upon all the fortunes of his day, feeling even and again--
"...the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused.
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns.
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things."
Say what we may of the errors and the degrading sins of our kind,
we do not willingly make what is worst in us the distinguishing
trait of what is human. When we declare, with Bagehot, that the
author whom we love writes like a human being, we are not
sneering at him; we do not say it with a leer. It is in token of
admiration, rather. He makes us like our humankind. There is a
noble passion in what he says, a wholesome humor that echoes
genial comradeships; a certain reasonableness and moderation in
what is thought and said; an air of the open day, in which things
are seen whole and in their right colors, rather than of the
close study or the academic class-room.
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