they are not quickened. Let them keep their past; we have our future. We may do much. What they can do is largely at an end.

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In literature also I wish to bring these distinctions before you, these differences of standard; and perhaps I cannot accomplish this better than by exhibiting them as they are presented in a few verses from the poet of the imperfect. I suppose if we try to mark out with precision the work of Mr. Browning,— I mean not to mark it out as the Browning societies do, but to mark it out with precision, we might say that its distinctive feature is that he has guided himself by the principle on which I have insisted: he has sought for beauty where there is seeming chaos; he has loved growth, has prized progress, has noted the advance of the spiritual, the pressing on of the finite soul through hindrance to its junction with the infinite. This it is which has inspired his somewhat crabbed verses, and has made men willing to undergo the labor of reading them, that they too may partake of his insight. In one of his poems - one which seems to me to contain some of his sublimest as well as some of his most commonplace lines, the poem on "Old Pictures in Florence," he discriminates between Greek and Christian art in much the same way I have done. In "Greek Art," Mr. Browning says:

You saw yourself as you wished you were,

As you might have been, as you cannot be;

Earth here, rebuked by Olympus there;

And grew content in your poor degree

With your little power, by those statues' godhead,
And your little scope, by their eyes' full sway,
And your little grace, by their grace embodied,
And your little date, by their forms that stay.

You would fain be kinglier, say, than I am?
Even so, you will not sit like Theseus.
You would prove a model? The son of Priam
Has yet the advantage in arms' and knees' use.
You're wroth can you slay your snake like Apollo?
You're grieved still Niobe's the grander!
You live there's the Racers' frieze to follow:
You die - there's the dying Alexander.

So, testing your weakness by their strength,
Your meagre charms by their rounded beauty,
Measured by Art in your breadth and length,

You learned to submit is a mortal's duty.

Growth came when, looking your last on them all,
You turned your eyes inwardly one fine day
And cried with a start What if we so small

Be greater and grander the while than they!
Are they perfect of lineament, perfect of stature?
In both, of such lower types are we

Precisely because of our wider nature;
For time, theirs

ours, for eternity.

To-day's brief passion limits their range;

It seethes with the morrow for us and more. They are perfect - how else? they shall never change: We are faulty-why not? we have time in store. The Artificer's hand is not arrested

With us; we are rough-hewn, no-wise polished:

They stand for our copy, and once invested

With all they can teach, we shall see them abolished.

You will notice that in this subtle study Mr. Browning points out how through contact with perfection there may come content with our present lot. This I call the danger of perfection, our possible belittlement through beauty. For in the lives of us all there should be a divine discontent, - not devilish discontent, but divine discontent,-a consciousness that life may be larger than we have yet attained, that we are to press beyond what we have reached, that joy lies in the future, in that which has not been found, rather than in the realized present. And it seems to me if ever a people were called on to understand this glory of the imperfect, it is we of America, it is you of the Middle West; it is especially you who are undertaking here the experiment of a woman's college. You are at the beginning, and that fact should lend an interest to your work which cannot so readily be realized in our older institutions. As you look eastward upon my own huge university, Harvard University, it probably appears to you singularly beautiful, reverend in its age, magnificent in its endowments, equable in its working; perhaps you contemplate it as nearing perfection, and contrast your incipient college with it as hardly deserving the name You are entirely mistaken. Harvard University, to its glory be it said, is enormously unfinished; it is a great way from perfect; it is full of blemishes We are tinkering at it all the time; and if it were not

so, I for one should decline to be connected with it. Its interest for me would cease. You are to start free from some trammels that we feel. Because we have so large a past laid upon us we have not some freedoms of growth, some opportunities of enlargement, which you possess. Accordingly, in your very experiment here you have a superb illustration of the principle I am trying to explain. This young and imperfect college should interest you who are members of it; it should interest this intelligent city. Wise patrons should find here a germ capable of such broad and interesting growth as may well call out their heartiest enthusiasm.

If then the modes of accepting the passion for perfection are so divergent as I have indicated, is it possible to suggest methods by which we may discipline ourselves in the nobler way of seeking the interests of life?—I mean by taking part with things in their beginnings, learning to reverence them there, and so attaining an interest which will continually be supported and carried forward. You may look with some anxiety upon the doctrine which I have laid down. You may say, "But beauty is seductive; beauty allures me. I know that the imperfect in its struggle toward perfection is the nobler matter. I know that America is, for him who can see all things, a more interesting land than Spain. Yes, I know this, but I find it hard to feel it. My strong tempta

tion is to lie and dream in romance, in ideal perfection. By what means may I discipline myself out of this degraded habit and bring myself into the higher life, so that I shall always be interested in progress, in the future rather than in the past, in the on-going rather than in the completed life?" I cannot give an exact and final receipt for this better mind. A persistently studied experience must be the teacher. To-day you may understand what I say, you may resolve to live according to the methods I approve. But you may be sure that to-morrow you will need to learn it all over again. And yet I think I can mention several forms of discipline, as I may call them. I can direct your attention to certain modes by which you may instruct yourselves how to take an interest in the imperfect thing, and still keep that interest an honorable one.

In my judgment, then, your first care should be to learn to observe. A simple matter-one, I dare say, which it will seem to you difficult to avoid. You have a pair of eyes; how can you fail to observe? Ah! but eyes can only look, and that is not observing. We must not rest in looking, but must penetrate into things, if we would find out what is there. And to find this out is worth while, for everything when observed is of immense interest. There is no object so remote from human life that when we come to study it we may not detect within its narrow com