even to the absorbed and hitherto unconscious throngs.  We have here no pale-browed, far-sighted philosopher, but a ruddy-faced, high-spirited man, cheerful-tempered, yet not equilibrious, susceptible to annoyance, capable of wrathful outbursts, with eyes to see all sweet sights, ears to hear all sweet sounds, and lips to sing their loveliness to others, and also with eyes and ears and lips just as keen to distinguish and just as hold to denounce the sights and sounds that are unlovely;—­and this man, with his ringing laugh and his springing step, walks cheerily to and fro in his daily work, striking the rocks here and there by the way-side with his bright steel hammer, eliciting a shower of sparks from each, and then on to the next.  It is not the serious business of his life, but its casual and almost careless experiments.  He does not wait to watch effects.  You may gather up the brushwood and build yourself a fire, if you like.  His part of the affair is but a touch and go,—­ partly for love and partly for fun.

There are places where a severer taste, or perhaps only a more careful revision, would have changed somewhat.  At times an exuberance of spirits carries him to the very verge of coarseness, but this is rare and exceptional.  The fabric may be slightly ravelled at the ends and slightly rough at the selvedge, but in the main it is fine and smooth and lustrous as well as strong.  A coarse nature carefully clipped and sheared and fashioned down to the commonplace of conventionality will often exhibit a negative refinement, while a mind of real and subtile delicacy, but of rugged and irrepressible individuality, will occasionally shoot out irregular and uncouth branches.  Yet between the symmetry of the one and the spontaneity of the other the choice cannot be doubtful.  We are not defending coarseness in any guise.  It is always to be assailed, and never to be defended.  It is always a detriment, and never an ornament.  No excellence can justify it.  No occasion can palliate it.  But coarseness is of two kinds,—­one of the surface, and one in the grain.  The latter is pervading and irremediable.  It touches nothing which it does not deface.  It makes all things common and unclean.  It grows more repulsive as the roundness of youth falls away and leaves its harsh features more sharply outlined.  But the other coarseness is only the overgrowth of excellence,—­the rankness of lusty life.  It is vigor run wild.  It is a fault, but it is local and temporal.  Culture corrects it.  As the mind matures, as experience accumulates, as the vision enlarges, the coarseness disappears, and the rich and healthful juices nourish instead a playful and cheerful serenity that illumines strength with a softened light, that disarms opposition and delights sympathy, that shines without dazzling and attracts without offending.