Mark the watchful impassiveness with which he gazes at the ugly side of life. “I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all oppression and shame; I hear convulsive sobs from young men at anguish with themselves, remorseful after deeds done; * * * * * I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny; I see martyrs and prisoners— I observe a famine at sea—I observe the sailors casting lots who shall be killed, to preserve the lives of the rest; I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon labourers, the poor, and upon negroes and the like; All these—all the meanness and agony without end, I sit and look out upon, See, hear, and am silent.” No one is too base, too degraded for Whitman’s affection. This is no mere book sentiment with him; and many stories are told of his tenderness and charity towards the “dregs of humanity.” That a man is a human being is enough for Whitman. However he may have fallen there is something in him to appeal to. He would have agreed with Browning that— “Beneath the veriest ash there hides a spark of soul, Which, quickened by Love’s breath, may yet pervade the whole O’ the grey, and free again be fire; of worth the same Howe’er produced, for great or little flame is flame.” Like Browning, also, Whitman fears lassitude and indifference more than the turmoil of passion. He glories in the elemental. At present he thinks we are too fearful of coarseness and rankness, lay too much stress on refinement. And so he delights in “unrefinement,” glories in the woods, air-sweetness, sun-tan, brawn. “_So long_! I announce a life that shall be copious, vehement, spiritual bold, And I announce an did age that shall lightly and joyfully meet its translation.” Cultured conventions, of which we make so much, distress him. They tend, he argues, to enervation, to a poor imitative, self-conscious art, to an artificial, morbid life. His curative methods were heroic; but who can say that they were not needed, or that they were mischievous? Certainly in aiming first of all at sincerity he has attained that noble beauty which is born of strength. Nature, as he saw, was full of vital loveliness by reason of her very power. The average literary artist is always seeking for the loveliness, aiming after beauty of form, without a care whether what he is saying has the ring of sincerity and truth, whether it is in touch with the realities of Nature. And in his super-refinements he misses the beauty that flashes forth from the rough, savage songs of Whitman. Whitman does not decry culture. But he places first the educative influence of Nature. “The best Culture,” he says, “will always be that of the manly and courageous instincts and loving perception, and of self-respect.”