Son tempérament, son caractère, sa vie, tout conspire à nous montrer son art tel que nous avons essayé de le définir. Une profonde unité les scelle. Et n'est-ce pas vers la découverte de cette unité-là, qui groupe en un faisceau solide les gestes, les pensées et les travaux d'un génie sur la terre, que la critique, revenue enfin de tant d'erreurs, devait tendre uniquement? VERHAEREN, _Rembrandt._ THE NEW AGE Tout bouge--et l'on dirait les horizons en marche. É.V., 'La Foule.' The feeling of this age of ours, of this our moment in eternity, is different in its conception of life from that of our ancestors. Only eternal earth has changed not nor grown older, that field, gloomed by the Unknown, on which the monotonous light of the seasons divides, in a rhythmic round, the time of blossoms and of their withering; changeless only are the action of the elements and the restless alternation of night and day. But the aspect of earth's spirit has changed, all that is subjected to the toil of man. Has changed, to change again. The evolution of the phenomena of culture seems to proceed with ever greater rapidity: never was the span of a hundred years as rich, as replete as that which stretches to the threshold of our own days. Cities have shot up which are as huge and bewildering, as impenetrable and as endless, as nothing else has been save those virgin forests now fast receding before the onward march of the tilled land. More and more the work of man achieves the grandiose and elementary character that was once Nature's secret. The lightning is in his hands, and protection from the weather's sudden onslaughts; lands that once yawned far apart are now forged together by the iron hoop with which of old only the narrow strait was arched; oceans are united that have sought each other for thousands of years; and now in the very air man is building a new road from country to country. All has changed. Tout a changé: les ténèbres et les flambeaux. Les droits et les devoirs out fait d'autres faisceaux, Du sol jusqu'au soleil, une neuve énergie Diverge un sang torride, en la vie élargie; Des usines de fonte ouvrent, sous le ciel bleu, Des cratères en flamme et des fleuves en feu; De rapides vaisseaux, sans rameurs et sans voiles, La nuit, sur les flots bleus, étonnent les étoiles; Tout peuple réveillé se forge une autre loi; Autre est le crime, autre est l'orgueil, autre est l'exploit.[1] Changed, too, is the relation of individual to individual, of the individual to the whole; at once more onerous and less burdensome is the network of social laws, at once more onerous and less burdensome our whole life.