The dreams were of empire. Old men and young toiled as
"terribly" as mighty Raleigh. The "spacious times" of Queen
Elizabeth seemed, indeed, to be translated to another sphere,
though here the elements that went into the mixture were
less diverse. Boom methods of Gargantuan scale were applied
to cultural factors as well as to the physical. Few men
stopped to reflect that while objects of art may be bought by
the wholesale, the development of genuine culture is too
intimately personal and too chemically blended with the
spiritual to be bartered for. The Huntingtons paid a quarter
of a million dollars for Gainsborough's "The Blue Boy." It is
very beautiful. Meanwhile the mustang grapevine waits for some
artist to paint the strong and lovely grace of its drapery and
thereby to enrich for land-dwellers every valley where it
hangs over elm or oak.
Most of the books in this section could be placed in other
sections. Many have been. They represent the vigor, vitality,
energy, and daring characteristic of our frontiers. To quote
Harvey Fergusson's phrase, the adventures of mettle have
always had "a tension that would not let them rest.
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