DEMOOKACY AND LITERATURE 157 



It is hard to shake off the conviction that the old 

 order of things had the advantage of picturesque- 

 ness. Is it because it is so hard to free ourselves 

 from the illusions of time and distance ? Charm, 

 enticement, dwell with the remote, the unfamiliar. 

 The now, the here, are vulgar and commonplace. 

 We find it hard to realize that the great deeds were 

 done on just such a day as this, and that the actors 

 in them were just such men as we see about us. 

 Then the days of one's youth seem strange and 

 incredible ; how diiferent their light from this hard, 

 prosy glare ! Our distrust of our own day and land 

 as furnishing suitable material for poetry and ro- 

 mance doubtless springs largely from this illusion. 



At the same time, a mechanical and industrial 

 age like ours no doubt offers a harder problem to the 

 imaginative producer than the ages of faith and fa- 

 naticism of the past. The steam whistle, the type of 

 our civilization, what can the poet make of it ? The 

 clank of machinery, it must be confessed, is less in- 

 spiring than the clash of arms ; the railroad is less 

 pleasing to look upon than the highway, because it 

 is more arbitrary and mechanical. In the same way, 

 the steamship seems unrelated to the great forces 

 and currents of the globe. Yet to put these things 

 in poetry only requires time, only requires a more 

 complete adjustment of our lives to them, and hence 

 the proper vista and association. As is always the 

 case, it is a question of the man and not of the ma- 

 terial. Goethe said to Eckermann, "Our German 

 sesthetical people are always talking about poetical 



