DEMOCRATIC ART 261 



One kick would be enough to break the chain ; 



But the beast fears, and what the child demand 6 * 



It does ; nor its own terror understands, 



Confused and stupefied by bugbears vain. 

 Most wonderful ! with its own hand it ties 



And gags itself gives itself death and war 



For pence doled out by kings from its own store. 

 Its own are all things between earth and heaven ; 



But this it knows not ; and if one arise 



To tell this truth, it kills him unforgiven. 



In Europe, again, as in America, the founts of earlier 

 inspiration are failing. Classical antiquity and romance 

 cannot supply perennial nutriment for modern art. The 

 literary revolution which I described at the beginning of this 

 essay, dethroned those elder deities and threw the sanctuary 

 of the spirit open. Science, the sister of Democracy, brings 

 man face to face with nature, and with God in nature. A 

 more ethereal spirituality than has yet been dreamed of 

 begins to penetrate our conceptions of the universe, of law, of 

 duty, of human rights and destinies. Art and literature, if 

 they are to hold their own, must adapt themselves to these 

 altered conditions. They must have a faith not in their 

 own excellence as art, and in their several styles and rhythms 

 but in their mission and their power to present the genius 

 of the age, its religion and its character, with the same force 

 as the Greek sculptors presented paganism and the Italian 

 painters presented mediaeval Catholicity. If they cannot 

 ascend to this endeavour they are lost. 



' Literature, strictly considered,' says Whitman, 'has never 

 recognised the People, and, whatever may be said, does not 

 to-day. ... I know nothing more rare, even in this country, 

 than a fit scientific estimate and reverent appreciation of the 

 People of their measureless wealth of latent power and 

 capacity, their vast artistic contrasts of lights and shades, 

 with, in America, their entire reliability in emergencies, and 

 a certain breadth of historic grandeur, of peace or war, far 

 surpassing all the vaunted samples of book-heroes, or any 

 haut-ton coteries, in all the records of the world.' 



This assertion he proceeds to support by reference to the 



