ubtful. 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.

Here arises a fear lest the apologetic nature of our remarks may seem to
indicate a much greater need of apology than actually exists. We have
been led into this line of remark, not so much by a perusal of the
book under consideration, in which, indeed, there is very little, if
anything, to offend, as by the nature of the objections which we have
most frequently heard against this author's productions, both written
and spoken. We do not even confine ourselves to defence, but go farther,
and question whether the allegations of coarseness may not oftener
be the fault of the plaintiff than of the defendant. Is there not a
conventional standard of refinement which measures things by its own
arbitrary self, and finds material for displeasure in what is really
but a sincere and almost unconscious rendering of things as they exist?
There are facts which modern fastidiousness justly enough commands to he
wrapped around with graceful drapery before they shall have audience.
But do we not commit a trespass against virtue, when we demand the same
soft disguises to drape facts whose disguise is the worst immorality,
whose naked hideousness is the only decency, which must be seen
disgusting to warrant their being seen at all? So Mr. Beecher has been
censured for irreverence, when what was called his irreverence has
seemed to us but the tenderness engendered of close connection. Cannot
one live so near t