able, because it is the product of the
play of the imagination on the realities
of life; and until the imagination per-
ishes, the vision of the ultimate per-
fection will form and reform in the
heart of every generation. It is the
inspiration of every art, the end of
every noble occupation, the secret
hope of every fine character.

Idealism in this sense, not as the
product of an easy and ignorant op-
timism turning away from the facts of
life, but as the product of a large and
spiritual dealing with those facts, is
the very soul, not only of noble living,
but of those noble expressions of life
which the greater writers have given
us. They disclose wide diversity of
gifts, but they have this in common, --
that, in discovering to us the spiritual
order of the facts of life, they disclose
also those ideal figures which the race

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v?