Men who have the reputation for good taste often acquire it solely because of the want of genius.

By taste I mean a quick tact into the harmony of composition, the art of making the whole consistent with its parts, the _concinnitas_.

Schiller alone of our authors has it.

But we are fast mending; and by following shadows so long we have been led at last to the substance.

Our past literature is to us what astrology was to science,--false but ennobling, and conducting us to the true language of the intellectual heaven." Another time the scenes they passed, interspersed with the ruins of frequent monasteries, leading them to converse on the monastic life, and the various additions time makes to religion, the German said: "Perhaps one of the works most wanted in the world is the history of Religion.