relaxed hold on the social movement for which it substitutes man's
universal nature, and the mist that settles round it in its latest
example, sufficient illustration has been given of the changes of time
to which idealism is subject, and also of the essential truth surviving
in the works of the past, which in the epics is the vision of how the
ends of God have been accomplished in the world and in the soul by the
union of divine grace with heroic will,--the interpretation and
glorification, of history and of man's single conflict in himself ago
after age, asserting through all their range the supremacy of the ideal
order over its foes in the entire race-life of man.

Out of these changes of time, in response to the varying moods of men in
respect to the world they inhabit, arise those phases of art which are
described as classical and romantic, words of much confusion. It has
been attempted to distinguish the latter as having an element of
remoteness, of surprise, of curiosity; but to me, at least, classical
art has the same remoteness, the same surprise, and answers the same
curiosity as romantic art. If I were to endeavour to oppose them I
should say that classical art is clear, it is perfectly grasped in form,
it satisfies the intellect, it awakes an emotion absorbed by itself, it
definitely guides the will; romantic art is touched with mystery, it has
richness and intricacy of form not fully comprehended, it suggests more
than it satisfies, it stirs an unconfined and wandering emotion, it
invigorates an adventurous will; classicism is whole in itself and lives
in the central region, the white light, of that star of ideality which
is the light of our knowledge; romanticism borders on something
else,--the rosy corona round about our star, carrying on its dawning
power into those unknown infinities which embosom the spark of life. The
two have always existed in conjunction, the romantic element in ancient
literature being large. But owing to the disclosure of the world to us