200 • EAKLY KINGS OF NORWAY. society ever was got into existence, nor can ever again be. The violences, fightings, crimes — ah yes, these seldom fail, and they are very lamentable. But always, too, among those old populations, there was one saving element; the now want of which, espe- cially the unlamented want, transcends all lamenta- tion. Here is one of those strange, piercing, winged- words of Ruskin, which has in it a terrible truth for us in these epochs now come : ' My friends, the follies of modern Liberalism, many
- and great though they be, are practically summed in
' this denial or neglect of the quality and intrinsic
- value of things. Its rectangular beatitudes, and
- spherical benevolences, — theology of universal indul-
' gence, and jurisprudence which will hang no rogues, ' mean, one and all of them, in the root, incapacity of ' discerning, or refusal to discern, worth and unworth ' in anything, and least of all in man ; whereas Nature ' and Heaven command you, at your peril, to discern ' worth from unworth in everything, and most of all ' in man. Your main problem is that ancient and / trite one, " Who is best man ? " and the Fates for-
