Witness also the contempt our age once visited upon Browning, whose mind is slowly becoming recognized as one of the rich-gold minds of our century. Witness the sport over Ruskin's "Munera Pulveris," and the scornful reception given Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus." Now that a few years have passed, those who once reviled are teaching their children the pathway to the graves of the great. The harshness of the world's treatment of its greatest teachers makes one of the most pathetic chapters in history. God gives each nation only a few men of supreme talent. Gives it, for greatness is not made; it is found as is the gold. Gold cannot be made out of mud; it is uncovered. And God gives each generation a few men of the first order; and when they have created truth and beauty they have the right while they live to kindness and sympathy, not harshness and cynicism. No youth winning the first goal of his ambition was ever injured by knowing that his father's face did not flush with pride, while his mother's eyes were filled with happy tears, in joy of his first victory. No noble lover but girds himself for a second struggle the more resolutely for knowing that his noble mistress rejoiced in his first conquest. Frost itself is not more destructive to harvest fields than harshness is to the creative faculties. Strange that Florence gave Dante exile in exchange for his immortal poem! Strange that London gave Milton threats of imprisonment for the manuscript of "Paradise Lost!" Passing strange that until his career was nearly run universities visited upon John Ruskin only scorn and contumely, that ruined his health and broke his heart, withholding the wreath until, as he said pathetically, his only "pleasure was in memory, his ambition in heaven," and he knew not what to do with his laurel leaves save "lay them wistfully upon his mother's grave." In every age the critics that have refused honor to its worthies, living, have heaped gifts high upon the graves of its dead.