this one,
and that; he lops off absurdity, strengthens here and bolsters there,
until in his soul there grows up an ideal, which he materializes in
stone or bronze, on canvas, by spoken word, or with the twenty-odd
little symbols of Cadmus.

Greece had her group when the wit of Aristophanes sought to overtop the
stately lines of AEschylus; Praxiteles outdid Ictinus; and wayside words
uttered by Socrates were to outlast them all.

Rome had her group when all the arts sought to rival the silver speech
of Cicero. One art never flourishes alone--they go together, each man
doing the thing he can do best. All the arts are really one, and this
one art is simply Expression--the expression of Mind speaking through
its highest instrument, Man.

Happy is the child who is born into a family where there is a
competition of ideas, and where the recurring theme is truth. This
problem of education is not so very much of a problem after all.
Educated people have educated children, and the best recipe for
educating your child is this: Educate yourself.

* * * * *

The Rossettis were educated people: each was educated by all and all by
each.

Individuality was never ironed out, for no two were alike, and between
them all were constantly little skirmishes of wit, and any one who
tacked a thesis on the door had to fight for it. Luther Burbank rightly
says that children should not be taught religious dogma. The souls of
the Rossettis were not water-logged by religious belief formulated by
men with less insight and faith than they.

In this way they were free. And so we find the father and the mother,
blessed by exile in the cause of liberty, living hard, plain lives, in
clean yet dingy poverty, with never an endeavor to "shine" in society or
to pass for anything different than what they were, and never in debt a
penny to the haberdasher, the dressmaker, the milliner or the grocer.
When they had no money to buy a thing they wanted, they went without it.

Just the religion of paying your way and being kind would be a pretty
good sort of religion--don't you think so?

So now, behold this little Republic of Letters, father and mother and
four children: Maria, Christina, Dante Gabriel and William Michael.

The father was a poet, musician and teacher. The mother was a
housekeeper, adviser and critic, and supplied the necessary ballast of
commonsense, without which the domestic dory would surely have turne