dwells delighted; and for as dark as his pathway seems to the observer, he will have some kind of a bull's-eye at his belt. . . . The ground of a man's joy is often hard to hit. The observer (poor soul, with his documents!) is all abroad. For to look at the man is but to court deception. We shall see the trunk from which he draws his nourishment; but he himself is above and abroad in the green dome of foliage, hummed through by winds and nested in by nightingales. And the true realism were that of the poets, to climb up after him like a squirrel, and catch some glimpse of the heaven for which he lives. And the true realism, always and everywhere, is that of the poets: to find out where joy resides and give it a voice far beyond singing. For to miss the joy is to miss all. In the joy of the actors lies the sense of any action, that is the explanation, that the excuse. To one who has not the secret of the lanterns, the scene upon the links is meaningless. And hence the haunting and truly spectral unreality of realistic books." This quotation needs no excuse. The mould of human nature from which this copy was taken is forever broken, and can never be reproduced.
To be a lantern-bearer on the lonely heath, to rejoice in work and struggle—this is the romance, real, attainable, and apt for the world as it is and for the work we must do. If irrational pastime, attended with endurance, may be a joy, surely rational effort toward some desired result may have its poetry. Sacrifice and heroism are found in humble homes; commonplace labor has its dangers and its victories; and many a man at his work, in knowledge of the light concealed, the interest he
