heaven, with the angels ascending and descending upon them. The school is a monument to this vision--a heap of stones cast there, one by one, by followers and by witnesses. The fiftieth anniversary of the school brought together all its adherents and fosterers and old boys, and peopled Concord for a day with the race of gentle burghers that had followed the Doctor. It was a touching assemblage; because here in these people was to be found the peace of which he had all his life preached so much and felt so little. He had attained it in others. He had left it as a dower and an inheritance to the institution that he loved almost too passionately. Out of the strong had come forth sweetness. THE ÆSTHETIC. There are two distinct functions of the mind with regard to art: first, the creative function; second, the enjoying function. The first is the rôle of the artist, the second, the rôle of the public. The difference between these two rôles is that in the artist’s rôle the active part--the part that counts, the part that makes the beholder have sensations--is unconscious. The artist should be wholly creator, and not at all spectator. If, while he works, there is anything in him that applauds and enjoys as a spectator might do, this part will leave a touch of virtuosity, of self-consciousness, of exaggeration, in his work. If the matter be humorous, this exaggeration will perhaps appear in the form of smartness; if the matter be serious, as sentimentality or melodrama. The artist must not try to enjoy his own work by foretaste, or he will injure it. His æsthetic sense must not be active during the hours of creation; it must be consumed in the furnace of unconscious intellectual effort. The _reductio ad absurdum_ of the view here suggested would be somewhat as follows:--The supremely great artist would be indifferent to the fate of his own works, because he would not know they were great. The whole creature would have become so unconscious during the act of creation that there would be nothing left over which should return to mankind and say, “See this great work!” This seems to have happened in the case of Shakespeare. It must be confessed that there are very great artists in whose work we find a self-conscious, self-appreciatory note. There is, at times, such a note in Dante, and in Goethe. And it seems to me that even here the note a little deflects our attention from the matter in hand. Not by reason of this element, but in spite of it, does their work prevail.