, misery; sent to extirpate the bad,
laboriously to weed it out blade by blade, or boldly to plough and burn
it up by the sheaf, the field, the acre. But when this half of active
mankind has done its work, what would remain? A mere joyless desert of
painless vacuity; and the other half of the workers must come and sow
and plant absolute good, positive joy in this redeemed life soil; nay,
even while the work of destruction is far from completed, and most of
all, perhaps, then, do we require that in the very shadow of the yet
deep-rooted evil, the little tufts of good should rise up, and console
and strengthen us with their sight and their scent. And of all these
kinds of egotistic good which we must needs sow while evil is being
cleared away, art is one of the noblest and most necessary; and woe
betide those who, having the power of creating beauty, would leave their
allotted work and join the destroyers of falsehood and of evil. The
amount of absolute good in the world is comparatively small, and we must
seek to increase it for ever; but increased it cannot be except by the
full employment of our activities, and our activities can be fully
employed only in their own proper sphere. In every artist there is a
man, and the moral perfection of the man is more important than the
artistic perfection of the artist; but, in as far as the artist is an
artist, he must be satisfied to do well in his art. For, though art has
no moral meaning, it has a moral value; art is happiness, and to bestow
happiness is to create good.

A DIALOGUE ON POETIC MORALITY.

God sent a poet to reform His earth.--A. MARY F. ROBINSON.

"And meanwhile, what have you written?" asked Baldwin, tickling the
flies with his whip from off the horse's head, as they slowly ascended,
in the autumn afternoon, the hill of Montetramito, which with its ilex
and myrtle-grown black rocks, and its crumbling mounds, where the bright
green spruce pine clings to the washed-away scarlet sand, separates
the green and fertile plain of Lucca from the marshes of the Pisan
sea-shore. The two friends had met only an hour or so before at the foot
of the Apennine pass, and would part in not much more again. "And what
have you written?" repeated Baldwin.

"Nothing," answered the younger man, drearily, leaning back languidly in
the rickety little carriage. "Nothing, or rather too much; I don't know
which. Is trash too much or too little? Anyhow, there's none of it
remai