Professor Dowden says Landor falls below Shelley and Wordsworth because he had no divine message or oracle to deliver to the men of his generation,--no authentic word of the Lord to utter. Landor had great thoughts, but they were not of first-rate importance with reference to his times. He was more thoroughly imbued with the classic spirit than either Shelley or Wordsworth, and the classic spirit is at ease in Zion. The modern world differs from the ancient in its moral stress and fervor. This moral stress and fervor both Shelley and Wordsworth shared, but Landor did not. Where would the world be in thought, in works, in civilization, had there been no one-sided, overloaded, fanatical men,--men of partial views, of half-truths, of one idea? Where would Christianity have been, under the play of disinterested intellect, without disciples, without devotees, without saints and martyrs, without its Paul and its Luther, without prejudice, without superstition, without inflexibility? We might fitly contrast these two types of mind under the heads of Protestant and Catholic, the one personal, the other impersonal. With the Protestant type goes individualism, which, as I have said, is so marked a feature of the modern world. With the Catholic type goes institutionalism, which was so marked a feature of the ancient world. With the former goes the right of private judgment, innovation, progress, new forms of art; with the latter goes authority, obedience, the power of the past. The Protestant type is more capricious and willful; it is restless, venturesome, impatient of rules and precedents; the older type is more serene, composed, conservative, orderly. In criticism it is more objective; it upholds the standards, it lays down the law; it cherishes the academic spirit. The French mind is the more Catholic; the English the more Protestant. In literature the Protestant type is the more subjective and creative; it makes new discoveries, it founds new orders. Catholicism is exterior, formal, imposing; it takes little account of personal needs and peculiarities, while Protestantism is almost entirely concerned with the private, interior world. Individualism in religion begat Protestantism, and upon Protestantism it begat the numerous progeny of the sects, the thousand and one isms that now divide the religious world. To this spirit religion is something personal and private to every man, and in no sense a matter of forms and rituals. In fact, individualism fairly confronts institutionalism. This spirit carried into the region of æsthetics or literature gives rise to like results,--to a freer play of personal taste and preferences, to more intense individual utterances, to new and unique types of artistic genius, and to new lines of activity in the æsthetic field.