e arbiter is Taste.
With the Intellect or with the Conscience, it has only collateral
relations. Unless incidentally, it has no concern whatever either with
Duty or with Truth.

A few words, however, in explanation. That pleasure which is at once
the most pure, the most elevating, and the most intense, is derived, I
maintain, from the contemplation of the Beautiful. In the
contemplation of Beauty we alone find it possible to attain that
pleasurable elevation, or excitement, _of the soul_, which we recognize
as the Poetic Sentiment, and which is so easily distinguished from
Truth, which is the satisfaction of the Reason, or from Passion, which
is the excitement of the heart. I make Beauty, therefore,--using the
word as inclusive of the sublime,--I make Beauty the province of the
poem, simply because it is an obvious rule of Art that effects should
be made to spring as directly as possible from their causes--no one as
yet having been weak enough to deny that the peculiar elevation in
question is at least _most readily_ attainable in the poem. It by no
means follows, however, that the incitements of Passion, or the
precepts of Duty, or even the lessons of Truth, may not be introduced
into a poem and with advantage; for they may subserve, incidentally, in
various ways, the general purposes of the work; but the true artist
will always contrive to tone them down in proper subjection to that
_Beauty_ which is the atmosphere and the real essence of the poem.

I cannot better introduce the few poems which I shall present for your
consideration, than by the citation of the "Proem" to Mr. Longfellow's
"Waif":

The day is done, and the darkness
Falls from the wings of Night,
As a feather is wafted downward
From an eagle in his flight.

I see the lights of the village
Gleam through the rain and the mist,
And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me,
That my soul cannot resist:

A feeling of sadness and longing,
That is not akin to pain,
And resembles sorrow only
As the mist resembles the rain.

Come, read to me some poem,
Some simple and heartfelt lay,
That shall soothe this restless feeling,
And banish the thoughts of day.

Not from the grand old masters,
Not from the bards sublime,
Whose distant footsteps echo
Through the corridors of Time.

For, like strains of martial music,
Their mighty thoughts suggest
Life's endless toil and endeavor;
A