This is not a general statement. I have a specific instance in view, when, in 1886, I went to the Leinster House in Dublin--the public library of the place--and asked for Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass." On being informed that they had no copy of it in the library, I put down the book in the suggestion list. A number of Trinity students did the same. The matter was brought before the directors at their monthly meeting, and it appears it was strenuously objected to by the librarian, who pleaded the exclusion of the book on the ground of its being immoral, indecent! We carried the fight from private discussion to correspondence in the press; the editor of the _Dublin University Review_ put the pages of the magazine at our disposal, and it was not until a year afterwards, and until considerable pressure was brought on the directors, that "Leaves of Grass" was admitted into the catalogues of the Dublin library. But the genuine merit of Walt Whitman's works, as the true inspiration of individualistic genius is always destined to do, is rapidly conquering the opposition and prejudice even of those whose obtuse minds seldom discover the intrinsic good motive frequently underlying an indifferent form. Those whose objections rested on their incapacity of penetrating further than the surface of the headline are rapidly beginning to discern in Walt Whitman's writings a force, a sentiment, a moral passion, and a natural grandeur that is amply compensating for the occasional roughness or looseness of the expressions he mirrors them in. Before his death the good old poet had not only the satisfaction of knowing that his writings have been widely read and universally commented on, but he had the pleasure of seeing his "Leaves of Grass" translated into German by T. W. Rolleston, of Dublin, and Professor Schwartz, of Dresden, of having parts of it translated into French, and a few years ago Mr. Lee consulted me as to the advisability of rendering them into Russian, parts of the book having already been published in the periodicals of the Russian emigres in Switzerland. Not only this, but his innovations, his genius, have even founded a school, and has a following. The little volume published some time ago in England, under the title "Toward Democracy," by Ed. Carpenter, written in the same style as "The Leaves of Grass," is also gradually finding its way to the surface of the highest consideration. And such passages as this, when Nature is calling to man:-- "I, Nature, stand and call to you, though you heed not: "Have courage, come forth, O child of mine, that you may see me."