If you can once reach the point of view of Keats or Jefferies you will find a new world opening before you--a world of fewer ideas, but of far more simple and genuine life; of narrower horizon, but of intenser power over the primal emotions. This was a world without Christ--a world which placidly accepted slavery as a recognized institution; which calmly ignored all claims of the sick, the afflicted and the poverty-stricken, and which admitted the right to take one's own life when that life became burdensome through age or disease, or when self-destruction would save one from humiliation and punishment. [Illustration: BUST OF HOMER IN THE MUSEUM OF NAPLES ANOTHER FINE BUST IS IN THE LOUVRE AT PARIS BUT ALL ARE IDEALIZED FOR THE WORLD HAS NO AUTHENTIC RECORDS OF THE AUTHOR OF THE "ILIAD" AND THE "ODYSSEY"] These ideas are all reflected in the great masterpieces of the Greeks and the Romans which have come down to us. Sometimes this reflection is tinged with a modern touch of sentiment, as in the _Meditations_ of Marcus Aurelius; but usually it is hard and repellant in its unconsciousness of romantic love or sympathy or regard for human rights, which Christianity has made the foundation stones of the modern world. This difference it is which prevents the average man or woman of today from getting very near to the classic writers. Even the greatest of these, with all their wealth of beauty and pathos, fail to impress one as do far less gifted writers of our own time.