the extraordinary that we extirpate what is bad.  The whole becomes less coarse; but the whole becomes more vulgar.”  We may at least hope that vulgarity will not yet a while persecute freedom of mind.  Descartes, living in the brilliant seventeenth century, was nowhere so well off as at Amsterdam, because, as “every one was engaged in trade there,” no one paid any heed to him.  It may be that general vulgarity will one day be the condition of happiness, for the worst American vulgarity would not send Giordano Bruno to the stake or persecute Galileo.  We have no right to be very fastidious.  In the past we were never more than tolerated.  This tolerance, if nothing more, we are assured of in the future.  A narrow-minded, democratic regime is often, as we know, very troublesome.  But for all that men of intelligence find that they can live in America, as long as they are not too exacting. Noli me tangere is the most one can ask for from democracy.  We shall pass through several alternatives of anarchy and despotism before we find repose in this happy medium.  But liberty is like truth; scarcely any one loves it on its own account, and yet, owing to the impossibility of extremes, one always comes back to it.

We may as well, therefore, allow the destinies of this planet to work themselves out without undue concern.  We should gain nothing by exclaiming against them, and a display of temper would be very much out of place.  It is by no means certain that the earth is not falling short of its destiny, as has probably happened to countless worlds; it is even possible that our age may one day be regarded as the culminating point since which humanity has been steadily deteriorating; but the universe does not know the meaning of the word discouragement; it will commence anew the work which has come to naught; each fresh check leaves it young, alert, and full of illusions.  Be of good cheer, Nature!  Pursue, like the deaf and blind star-fish which vegetates in the bed of the ocean, thy obscure task of life; persevere; mend for the millionth time the broken meshes of the net; repair the boring-machine which sinks to the last limits of the attainable the well from which living water will spring up.  Sight and sight again the aim which thou hast failed to hit throughout the ages; try to struggle through the scarcely perceptible opening which leads to another firmament.  Thou hast the infinity of time and space to try the experiment.  He who can commit blunders with impunity is always certain to succeed.

Happy they who shall have had a part in this great final triumph which will be the complete advent of God!  A Paradise lost is always, for him who wills it so, a Paradise regained.  Often as Adam must have mourned the loss of Eden, I fancy that if he lived, as we are told, 930 years after his fall, he must often have exclaimed:  Felix culpa! Truth is, whatever may be said to the contrary, superior to all fictions.  One ought never to regret seeing