Their courage and buoyancy were of higher value than we yet understand. Faith is absolutely essential in a great democratic society. When we cease to believe in God we cease to believe in man, and when our faith in man goes, democracy becomes a vast, irrational engine of tyranny and corruption. In the last analysis democracy rests in the belief that there is something of the divine in every man, and that through every life there shines a glimpse of the eternal order. For Government rests, not in the will of the majority, but on the will of God; and democracy is but a vaster surface upon which to discover the play of that will. It follows from these characteristics that the real significance of the New England writers lies not in what they did, but in what they unconsciously predicted. Clear and ringing as are the notes they struck, these notes are prelusive; they suggest the great _motifs_, but they do not completely unfold them; they could not, for the time was not yet ripe; they announced the principle of individuality, and they sang the great idea of nationality; but the depth and richness of national life was not theirs to express. That vast life rises more and more into the national consciousness, but its Homer or Dante or Shakespeare has not appeared--probably cannot appear for a long time to come. That life is too wide and still too inharmonious for clear expression. Its very richness postpones the day of its ultimate expression; but when the hour is ripe it will embody an ideal as significant as any in history, with illustration more varied and vital. We are still the victims of our continent; we shall one day be its masters.