invited only a sneer, often, it is true, associated with flashing wit.

Among its more pleasing manifestations, Romanticism shows a remarkable
group of gifted, capable women, possibly because this philosophy of
intuition corresponds to the higher intimations of woman's soul. Other
obvious fruits of the movement were the revival of the poetry and
dignity of the Middle Ages, both in art and life--that colorful,
form-loving musical era which the Age of Enlightenment had so crassly
despised. That this yearning for the beautiful background led to
reaction in politics and religion is natural enough; more edifying are
the rich fruits which scholarship recovered when Romanticism had
directed it into the domains of German antiquity and philology, and
the wealth of popular song. In addition to these, we must reckon the
spoils which these adventurers brought back from their quest into the
faery lands of Poetry in southern climes.

When all is said, and in spite of Romanticism's weak and unmanly
quitting of the field of duty, in spite of certain tendencies to
ignore and supersede the adamant foundations of morality upon which
the "humanities" as well as society rest, one cannot quite help hoping
that somehow good may be the final hint of it all. Like Mary Stuart,
it is, at least, somewhat better than its worst repute, as formulated
by its enemies. Estimates change; even the excellent Wordsworth was
held by the English reviewers to be fantastic and vague in his _Ode to
Duty_. We should not forget that the most shocking pronouncements of
the Romanticists were uttered half-ironically, to say the least. After
its excursion into the fantastic jungle of Romanticism, the world has
found it restful and restorative, to be sure, to return to the limited
perfection of the serene and approved classics; yet perchance it _is_
the last word of all philosophy that the astounding circumambient