Yes, but what might Omar have been with a nobler philosophy of life, and a more wholesome self-restraint. Blasé, toper as he was, how did he begin his Rubáiyat? Thus finely! "Wake! For the Sun who scatter'd into flight The stars before him from the Field of Night, Drives Night along with them from Heav'n and strikes The Sultan's turret with a Shaft of Light." There was poetry in the man still--and that, too, of the kind stirred by nature. And from nature likewise comes the pathos of a closing verse-- "Yon rising Moon that looks for us again-- How oft hereafter will she wax and wane; How oft hereafter rising look for us Through this same Garden--and for _one_ in vain! " And if in spite of all that is said, Wordsworth's haunting Ode still asserts its sway, then let there be a still more direct appeal to its author. One of his loveliest sonnets is that which opens-- "It is a beauteous evening, calm and free." He tells of the holy stillness, the setting of the broad sun, the eternal motion of the sea. He is filled with a sense of mystic adoration. And then there is a sudden turn of thought-- "Dear child! dear girl! that walkest with me here, If thou appear untouch'd by solemn thought, Thy nature is not therefore less divine." What is this but to regard the intuitional faculty as still largely latent, awaiting the maturing processes of the passing years? There is no place for further argument. What has just been said of the child may be said of the race, especially if there is anything in the theory that the child recapitulates in brief the stages through which the race has passed in its upward progress. In the dawn of civilisation the senses would be comparatively fresh and keen, though lacking in delicacy of aesthetic discrimination; the imagination would be powerful and active. Hence the products, so varied and immense, of the animistic tendency and the mytho-poeic faculty. To these stages succeed the periods of reflective thought and accurate research, which, while blunting to some degree the sharp edge of sensibility, more than atone for the loss by the widening of horizons and the deepening of mysteries. We must be careful, however, not to press the analogy, or parallel, too far. Important modifications of the recapitulation theory are being urged even on its biological side; it is wise, therefore, to be doubly on guard when dealing with the complexities of social development. Still, it is safe to assert that, for the race as for the individual, the modes of cosmic emotion grow fuller and richer in "the process of the suns." Would it be easy to parallel in any previous period of history that passage from Jefferies?-- "With all the intensity of feeling which exalted me, all the intense communion I held with the earth, the sun, and the sky, the stars hidden by the light, with the ocean--in no manner can the thrilling depth of these feelings be written--with these I