a single century, a prosperity unparalleled in the annals of human affairs; how, from a state of great poverty and feebleness, our country grew rapidly to one of opulence and power; how her agriculture and her manufacture flourished together; how, by a wise system of free education and a free press, knowledge was disseminated, and the arts and sciences advanced; how the ingenuity of her people became fruitful of wonders far more astonishing than any of which the alchemists had ever dreamed."

Yet after all both Macaulay and McMaster would have found that the sinews of their story were absent, the dramatic power and interest of their pages vanished if the temper, collisions, short sightedness, virulence, ambition, sins and vices, of public characters, the pressure of popular delusions, the knavery of individuals and associations had not entered the currents of their histories, and forced from them appreciation and analysis, comment, description, criticism, and praise. The motor force of events seem somehow to proceed from the imperfections of men, whether they are sins or ignorances, or from their sufferings, and without events, History as a literary phenomenon would soon decline into a colorless and vapid tale. The inquiry of Lucan in the very first lines of his

Civil War are pertinent to all stages of History, which fasten and fascinate the ears and eyes of men:

Jamque irae patuere deum, manifestaque belli Signa dedit mundus: legesque, et foedera rerum, Praescia monstrifero vertit natura tumultu, Indixitque nefas, cur hanc tibi rector Olympi Sollicitis visum mortalibus addere curam, Noscant venturas ut dira per omina clades?

At this point it is desirable to consider that the sins of mere brutishness are not as diversified or in any way as interesting as those of refinement and intellect, and of the higher range of cultivated and gifted natures, and never furnish the historian or the romancer with the finer grades of literary stuff. The cruelty of Verres versatus que sit, sine ulla, non modo religione, verum etiam dissimulatione, in omni genere furandi atque praedandi, is more interesting, and certainly less excusable than the brutality of a street loafer, and the turpitude of Cataline, furentem audacia, scelus anhelantem, pestem patriae nefarie molientem, more serviceable for literary workmanship (witness Cicero's orations) than the iniquities of a McKane, boss of Coney Island, admirably as Edward M. Shepard has used the latter for purposes of consummate description and characterization.

As hounds and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs,
Shoughs, water-rugs, and demi-wolves, are cleped
All by the name of dogs: the valued file
Distinguishes the swift, the slow, the subtle,
The house keeper, the hunter, every one
According to the gift which bounteous nature
Hath in him closed, whereby he does receive
Particular addition, from the bill

That writes them all alike; and so of men.

Sins of men in History administer to our literary pleasure, because of picturesque accompaniments, because they are of psychological interest, (see the curious and learned speculations of S. Baring Gould on the congenital insanity of the Caesars) because they fascinate us by a certain terror, a weird semblance in our own souls or understanding and appreci ation, a sensational delight in monstrous things, a trembling sense of expurgation, guilt and sympathy, the power of subjugating immensity, because of their sinister significance, because of their wide inalienable concordance with the nature of things, because they start a retinue of stirring events, and tumultuously throw into the arena of the world the sharp passionate conflict of good and evil. This indeed is the last and most pervasive and real quality of their effectiveness as literary agents.

It is the picture of improvement, of rising against the massed bodies of selfishness, error, lunacy, stubbornness, apathy, tyranny, cruelty, priggishness and lust, the apparent predetermination that makes of men's willfulness or ambition, serviceable instruments in the forward motion of the world that charms us. For in every sense what gives dramatic force to the History of this Earth, but the ingrained and rooted deviltry of things? The mystery of its redemption, the pathos of its suffering, the intensity of that earnestness which in noble souls breeds that desperate revolt against ruling conditions, and perpetually engages in new campaigns for restoration and purity; all these aspects rise from the phenomenon of Sin, make History literary, and produce engrossing and masterly studies, analyses, and volumes of immortal prose.

CHAPTER V.

THE SIN SUBSTANCE OF LITERATURE IN

DRAMA AND POETRY

Browning puts into the mouth of Paracelsus these singular and damning words:

Festus, were your nature fit

To be defiled, your eyes the eyes to ache
At gangrene-blotches, eating poison-blains,
The ulcerous barky scurf of leprosy

Which finds a man, and leaves-a hideous thing
That cannot but be mended by hell fire,

I would lay bare to you the human heart

Which God cursed long ago, and devils make since Their pet nest and their never-tiring home.

We will admit the words are over-wrought, the outpourings of a frenzied and disappointed nature, also saved from parched and feeble judgments by its resolute and frantic frankness, its insight. These are memorable words because they exaggerate-and exaggeration is a kind of sin-because they draw out the margins of a fact until it becomes a spectre, a terror and by this procedure of caricature make us think more closely on the truth they burlesque.

The words of Paracelsus may seem like "wild and