The interest these fine stories have for us, the power of a romance
over the boy who grasps the forbidden book under his bench at school,
our delight in the hero, is the main fact to our purpose. All these
great and transcendent properties are ours. If we dilate in beholding
the Greek energy, the Roman pride, it is that we are already
domesticating the same sentiment. Let us find room for this great guest
in our small houses. The first step of worthiness will be to disabuse
us of our superstitious associations with places and times, with number
and size. Why should these words, Athenian, Roman, Asia and England, so
tingle in the ear? Where the heart is, there the muses, there the gods
sojourn, and not in any geography of fame. Massachusetts, Connecticut
River and Boston Bay you think paltry places, and the ear loves names
of foreign and classic topography. But here we are; and, if we will
tarry a little, we may come to learn that here is best. See to it only
that thyself is here, and art and nature, hope and fate, friends,
angels and the Supreme Being shall not be absent from the chamber where
thou sittest. Epaminondas, brave and affectionate, does not seem to us
to need Olympus to die upon, nor the Syrian sunshine. He lies very well
where he is. The Jerseys were handsome ground enough for Washington to
tread, and London streets for the feet of Milton. A great man makes his
climate genial in the imagination of men, and its air the beloved
element of all delicate spirits. That country is the fairest which is
inhabited by the noblest minds. The pictures which fill the imagination
in reading the actions of Pericles, Xenophon, Columbus, Bayard, Sidney,
Hampden, teach us how needlessly mean our life is; that we, by the
depth of our living, should deck it with more than regal or national
splendor, and act on principles that should interest man and nature in
the length of our days.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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