Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/35

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Within these verities new estates originate; moreover, they perpetually advance the knowledge and methods of the time-honored professions. The present and future influences of a school The spirit giveth life. are more assured when it enters their realm. If I did not believe this with my noonday reason and common sense, it would be an imposture for me to discourse to you upon our theme. The sovereign of the arts is the imagination, by whose aid man makes every leap forward; and emotion is its twin, through which come all fine experiences, and all great deeds are achieved. Man, after all, is placed here to live his life. Youth demands its share in every study that can engender a power or a delight. Universities must enhance the use, the joy, the worth of existence. They are institutions both human and humane: not inevitable, except in so far as they become schools for man's advancement and for the conduct of life.

We now have to do with the most ideal and comprehensive of those arts which intensify life and suggest life's highest possibilities. The name of poetry, like that of gentleman, is "soiled with all ignoble use;" but that is because its province is universal, and its government a republic, whose right of franchise any one can exercise without distinction of age,