This Greek mind, which thus became one of the main factors of the civilized life of Christendom, cannot be fully comprehended without the study of Homer, and is nowhere so vividly or so sincerely exhibited as in his works. He has a world of his own, into which, upon his strong wing, he carries us. There we find ourselves amidst a system of ideas, feelings, and actions, different from what are to be found anywhere else; and forming a new and distinct standard of humanity. Many among them seem as if they were then shortly about to be buried under a mass of ruins, in order that they might subsequently reappear, bright and fresh for application, among later generations of men. Others of them almost carry us back to the early morning of our race, the hours of its greater simplicity and purity, and more free intercourse with God. In much that this Homeric world exhibits, we see the taint of sin at work, but far, as yet, from its perfect work and its ripeness; it stands between Paradise and the vices of later heathenism, far from both, from the latter as well as from the former; and if among all earthly knowledge, the knowledge of man be that which we should chiefly court, and if to be genuine it should be founded upon experience, how is it possible to over-value this primitive representation of the human race in a form complete, distinct, and separate, with its own religion, ethics, policy, history, arts, manners, fresh and true to the standard of its nature, like the form of an infant from the hand of the Creator, yet mature, full, and finished, in its own sense, after its own laws, like some masterpiece of the sculptor’s art.