Dr. Stiggins:
longer allure you; you will put away "strong" meat and return to your innocent, happy childhood over a diet of "Riscuit" and Grape Guts.
Have not the poets always sung of a fabled Age of Gold, when iron was suffered to remain in the earth, when, in the happy childhood of the world, man found shelter beneath the oaks and ate their simple produce, washed down with water from the sparkling brook? What if this vision should again be realised, if the world, weary of its follies and its crimes, should put them off and gain a second childhood?
Let us all work prayerfully, earnestly, persistently to this glorious end; but before it can be consummated much remains to be done. I have said that so far as modern literature goes, the gates are on the whole well kept, for modern criticism does its duty with respect to the current productions of the press. But what am I to say of the general attitude towards the fiction, the poetry and the drama of the past? I am afraid my verdict can-
162
