We might go on and say more of the exalted dreamers who from age to age have attempted the impossible task of idealizing the State by geometric rules or fantastic theories. Perhaps the two most notable--at least until the recent expansion of Socialistic propaganda--were the "Utopia" of Sir Thomas More and the "New Atlantis" of Lord Bacon. We must dismiss them by naming them. They lacked the Democratic Ideal. Yet, among the many gems which Lord Bacon has given to our language, the short terse phrases, which make him one of the most quotable of authors, is one memorable line in his "New Atlantis." He said of the Father of Solomon's house, "He had an aspect as though he pitied men." Benignant and blessed thought. One, however, of the world's intellectual sovereigns, who lived in the uplands of the imagination, who traversed the gamut of human experience, and of whom we may say, if of any man, "He saw life steadily and saw it whole;" in dealing with the relation of man to the civic order, never indulged in illusion--William Shakespeare. It has often been said to his reproach that his dramas are not instinct with the spirit of liberty; that he believed in the right of the strongest to rule; that he deified strength and power; that he showed contempt for the mob and "rabblement." We cannot go into a discussion of this interesting matter. We must remember, however--a fact that is often overlooked--that Shakespeare was not only most extraordinary as a poet, but that he was one of the profoundest moralists that the world has known. His genius was supremely sane, calm, judicial, healthy. He painted men and women as they are. His nobly poised intellect and acute vision saw the realities of life. He knew the exalted possibilities of spiritual excellence to which humanity can rise, and the abysmal depths into which it can sink. He recognized the fact that society is swayed by selfish interests oftener than by a devotion to high ideals. He read history with a microscopic eye. Dowden, one of his most acute interpreters, says, "Shakespeare studied and represented in his art the world which lay before him. If he prophesied the future it was not in the ordinary manner of prophets, but only by completely embodying the present, in which the future was concerned." In his day the mob had not learned self-control, moral dignity, a discrimination between the transient and permanent in politics. Has it learned this lesson yet? His immortal works exhibit no world-weariness, no _blasé_ pessimism. He saw the eternal relations of cause and effect. He admired the intellectual powers and tremendous personalities of great historical characters like Julius Caesar, Coriolanus and Richard III, but he also saw their limitations, moral delinquencies and weaknesses which led inevitably to the snares into which they fell. He had a profound sympathy with human life; he was a lover of rectitude, nobility of character, self-sacrifice, manliness, womanliness.