Like the moral prestige that might encircle the vital presence of divine beings, we behold divinities represented in human shapes idealized into a significance altogether irresistible.

I'm bound to Californy with a tin pan on my knee, were the first we saw of that vast throng of gold-seekers, who flocked to our shores within a twelvemonth, and who have since become idealized in song and story as the "Argonauts," "the Boys of '49.

Robin and Maid Marian are, of course, characters no whit less idealized than the shepherds, though the process was largely effected by popular tradition instead of by the author.

The life of just-woman, she had wanted more, and idealized as only an artist canto be a man's maiden, a man's mate and the mother of his babes, but this was not for her.

The whole work blazes with wit, and with the wisdom of a proverbial philosophy, uttered by the ignorant squire of a fanatical and bewildered knight; but amidst the practical jokes and follies of all the characters in that marvellous work of fiction, we see also a moral beauty, idealized of course, such as was rivalled only in Spanish art in the Madonnas of Murillo.

Uncas and Magawisca please us still, Unreal, yet idealized with skill; But every poetaster scribbling witling, From the majestic oak his stylus whittling, Has helped to tire us, and to make us fear The monotone in which so much we hear Of "stoics of the wood," and "men without a tear.