[505] In a most characteristic passage, which may be quoted as a specimen of the style of this book, he writes of "the need of powerful native philosophers and orators and bards ... as rallying-points to come in times of danger.... For history is long, long, long. Shift and turn the combinations of the statement as we may, the problem of the future of America is in certain respects as dark as it is vast. Pride, competition, segregation, vicious wilfulness, and license beyond example, brood already upon us.... Flaunt it as we choose, athwart and over the roads of our progress, loom huge uncertainty, and dreadful, threatening gloom. It is useless to deny it. Democracy grows rankly up the thickest, noxious, deadliest plants and fruits of all--brings worse and worse invaders--needs newer, larger, stronger, keener compensations and compellers. Our lands embracing so much (embracing indeed the whole, rejecting none), hold in their breast that flame also [which is] capable of consuming themselves, consuming us all.... We sail a dangerous sea of seething currents, cross and under-currents, vortices--all so dark, untried--and whither shall we turn? It seems as though the Almighty had spread before this nation charts of imperial destinies, dazzling as the sun, yet with many a deep intestine difficulty and human aggregate of cankerous imperfection--saying, lo! the roads, the only plans of development, long and varied with all terrible balks and ebullitions.... Behold the cost, and already specimens of the cost. Thought you, greatness was to ripen for you like a pear? If you would have greatness, know that you must conquer it through ages, centuries--must pay for it with a proportionate price. Yet I have dreamed, merged in that hidden-tangled problem of our fate, whose long unravelling stretches mysteriously through time ... a little or a larger band--a band of brave and true, unprecedented yet--armed and equipped at every point--the members separated, it may be, by different dates and States ... but always one, compact in soul, conscience-serving, God-inculcating, inspired achievers, not only in literature the greatest art, but in all art--a new, undying order, dynasty, from age to age transmitted--a band, a class, at least as fit to cope with current years, our dangers, needs, as those who, for their times, so long, so well, in armour or in cowl, upheld and made illustrious that far back, feudal, priestly world."--_Comp. Prose_, 246-48; _cf._ also 202. [506] _Comp. Prose_, 221; 207 n. [507] _Comp. Prose_, 212. [508] _Ib._, 215. [509] _Ib._, 211. [510] _Ib._, 206. [511] _Comp. Prose_, 225. [512] _Ib._, 226. [513] _Ib._, 227. [514] _Ib._, 240, 241. [515] _Comp. Prose_, 244. [516] _Ib._, 250. [517] _Comp. Prose_, 273 n. [518] _L. of G._, 315. [519] _Ib._, 321, 76. [520] _L. of G._, 322. [521] Bucke, 44. [522] Burroughs, 126. [523] Bucke, 202, 203, 207-9. [524] _In re_, 72. [525] _L. of G._, 157; _cf._ "Two Rivulets," Song of Expos.