Compare this temper with that of a Marquis of Hertford, a Duke of
Devonshire, a Duc de Luynes! True guardians of the means of culture,
these men have given splendid hospitality to the great authors and
artists of past times, by keeping their works for the future with tender
and reverent care. Nor has this function of high stewardship ever been
more nobly exercised than it is to-day by that true knight and
gentleman, Sir Richard Wallace. Think of the difference between this
great-hearted guardian of priceless treasures, keeping them for the
people, for civilization, and a base-spirited Communard setting fire to
the library of the Louvre.

The ultra-democratic spirit is hostile to culture, from its hatred of
all delicate and romantic sentiment, from its scorn of the tenderer and
finer feelings of our nature, and especially from its brutish incapacity
to comprehend the needs of the higher life. If it had its way we should
be compelled by public opinion to cast all the records of our ancestors,
and the shields they wore in battle, into the foul waters of an eternal
Lethe. The intolerance of the sentiment of birth, that noble sentiment
which has animated so many hearts with heroism, and urged them to deeds
of honor, associated as it is with a cynical disbelief in the existence
of female virtue,[9] is one of the commonest signs of this evil spirit
of detraction. It is closely connected with an ungrateful indifference
towards all that our forefathers have done to make civilization possible
for us. Now, although the intellectual spirit studies the past
critically, and does not accept history as a legend is accepted by the
credulous, still the intellectual spirit has a deep respect for all that
is noble in the past, and would preserve the record of it forever. Can
you not imagine, have you not actually seen, the heir of some ancient
house who shares to the full the culture and aspirations of the age in
which we live, and who nevertheless preserves, with pious reverence, the
towers his forefathers built on the ancestral earth, and the oaks they
planted, and the shields that were carved on the tombs where the knights
and their ladies rest? Be sure that a right understanding of the present
is compatible with a right and reverent understanding of the past, and
that, although we may closely question history and tradition, no longer
with childlike faith, still the spirit of true culture would never
efface their vestiges. It was not M