t of that mystery which
is required to supplement it, and which is an abiding presence in the
habit of the sensitive and serious mind. Yet in classical art the
definite may still be rendered, the known, the conquered. Idealism has
its finished world therein; in romanticism it has rather its prophetic
work.

Such, then, as best I can state it in brief and rapid strokes, is the
world of art, its methods, its appeals, its significance to mankind.
Idealism, so presented, is in a sense a glorification of the
commonplace. Its realm lies in the common lot of men; its distinction is
to embrace truth for all, and truth in its universal forms of experience
and personality, the primary, elementary, equally shared fates,
passions, beliefs of the race. Shakspere, our great example, as
Coleridge wisely said, "kept in the highway of life." That is the royal
road of genius, the path of immortality, the way ever trodden by the
great who lead. I have ventured to speak at times of religious truth.
What is the secret of Christ's undying power? Is it not that he stated
universal truth in concrete forms of common experience so that it comes
home to all men's bosoms? Genius is supreme in proportion as it does
that, and becomes the interpreter of every man who is born into the
world, makes him know his brotherhood with all, and the incorporation of
his fate in the scheme of law, and ideal achievement under it, which is
the common ground of humanity. Ideal literature is the treasury of such
genius in the past; here, as I said in the beginning, the wisdom of the
soul is stored; and art, in all its forms, is immortal only in so far as
it has done its share in this same labour of illumination, persuasion,
and command, forecasting the spirit to be, companioning the spirit that
is, sustaining us all in the effort to make ideal order actual in
ourselves.

What, then, since I said that it is a question how to live as well as
how to express life,--what, then, is the ideal life? It is to make
one's life a poem, as Milton dreamed of the true poet; for as art works
through matter and takes on concrete and sensible shape with its mortal
conditions, so the soul dips in life, is in material action, and,
suffering a similar fate, sinks into limitations and externals of this
world and this flesh, through which it must live. In such a life, mortal
in all ways, to bring down to earth the vision that floats in the soul's
eyes, the ideal order as it is revealed