In quoting from Wordsworth’s “Laodamia” just now, I stopped short of the word “pure,” and said only that Massinger’s world was “equable.” I did this because in some of his lower characters there is a coarseness, nay, a foulness, of thought and sometimes of phrase for which I find it hard to account. There is nothing in it that could possibly corrupt the imagination, for it is altogether repulsive. In this case, as in Chapman’s, I should say that it indicated more ignorance of what is debasingly called Life than knowledge of it. With all this he gives frequent evidence of a higher conception of love than was then common. The region in which his mind seems most naturally to dwell is one of honor, courage, devotion, and ethereal sentiment. I cannot help asking myself, did such a world ever exist? Perhaps not; yet one is inclined to say that it is such a world as might exist, and, if possible, ought to exist. It is a world of noble purpose not always inadequately fulfilled; a world whose terms are easily accepted by the intellect as well as by the imagination. By this I mean that there is nothing violently improbable in it. Some men, and, I believe, more women, live habitually in such a world when they commune with their own minds. It is a world which we visit in thought as we go abroad to renew and invigorate the ideal part of us. The canopy of its heaven is wide enough to stretch over Boston also. I heard, the other day, the story of a Boston merchant which convinces me of it. The late Mr. Samuel Appleton was anxious about a ship of his which was overdue, and was not insured. Every day added to his anxiety, till at last he began to be more troubled about that than about his ship. “Is it possible,” he said to himself, “that I am getting to love money for itself, and not for its noble uses?” He added together the value of the ship and the estimated profit on her cargo, found it to be $40,000, and at once devoted that amount to charities in which he was interested. This kind of thing _may_ happen, and sometimes _does_ happen, in the actual world; it _always_ happens in the world where Massinger lays his scene. That is the difference, and it is by reason of this difference that I like to be there. I move more freely and breathe more inspiring air among those encouraging possibilities. As I just said, we find no difficulty in reconciling ourselves with its conditions. We find no difficulty even where there is an absolute disengagement from all responsibility to the matter-of-fact, as in the “Arabian Nights,” which I read through again a few years ago with as much pleasure as when a boy, perhaps with more. For it appears to me that it is the business of all imaginative literature to offer us a sanctuary from the world of the newspapers, in which we have to live, whether we will or no. As in looking at a picture we must place ourselves at the proper distance to harmonize all its particulars into an effective whole, I am not sure