elves are smaller. It is a strange result. Objective
civilization produced great men while making no conscious effort toward
such a result; subjective civilization produces a miserable and
imperfect race, contrary to its mission and its earnest desire. The
world grows more majestic, but man diminishes. Why is this?

We have too much barbarian blood in our veins, and we lack measure,
harmony, and grace. Christianity, in breaking man up into outer and
inner, the world into earth and heaven, hell and paradise, has
decomposed the human unity, in order, it is true, to reconstruct it more
profoundly and more truly. But Christianity has not yet digested this
powerful leaven. She has not yet conquered the true humanity; she is
still living under the antinomy of sin and grace, of here below and
there above. She has not penetrated into the whole heart of Jesus. She
is still in the _narthex_ of penitence; she is not reconciled, and even
the churches still wear the livery of service, and have none of the joy
of the daughters of God, baptized of the Holy Spirit.

Then, again, there is our excessive division of labor; our bad and
foolish education which does not develop the whole man; and the problem
of poverty. We have abolished slavery, but without having solved the
question of labor. In law, there are no more slaves--in fact, there are
many. And while the majority of men are not free, the free man, in the
true sense of the term, can neither be conceived nor realized. Here are
enough causes for our inferiority.

November 12th, 1852.--St. Martin's summer is still lingering, and the
days all begin in mist. I ran for a quarter of an hour round the garden
to get some warmth and suppleness. Nothing could be lovelier than the
last rosebuds, or the delicate gaufred edges of the strawberry leaves
embroidered with hoar-frost, while above them Arachne's delicate webs
hung swaying in the green branches of the pines,--little ball-rooms for
the fairies, carpeted with powdered pearls, and kept in place by a
thousand dewy strands, hanging from above like the chains of a lamp, and
supporting them from below like the anchors of a vessel. These little
airy edifices had all the fantastic lightness of the elf-world, and all
the vaporous freshness of dawn. They recalled to me the poetry of the
North, wafting to me a breath from Caledonia or Iceland or Sweden,
Frithjof and the Edda, Ossian and the Hebrides. All that world of cold
and mist, of genius a