Ignorance of these
things makes it worthless. Its best tutors are observations and
experience, and these serve only those who keep clear eyes and a
wide field of vision. It is exercise and discipline upon such a
scale, too, which strengthen, which for ordinary men come near to
creating, that capacity to reason upon affairs and to plan for
action which we always reckon upon finding in every man who has
studied to perfect his native force. This new day in which we
live cries a challenge to us. Steam and electricity have reduced
nations to neighborhoods; have made travel pastime, and news a
thing for everybody. Cheap printing has made knowledge a vulgar
commodity. Our eyes look, almost without choice, upon the very
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.
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