If we look to the past or to the present we shall find that the permanent power of any nation has always been in proportion to its cultivation of the soil—those republics which during the earlier and middle ages, were indebted for their growth mainly to commerce, did for a moment, indeed, cast a dazzling splendor across the pathway of time; but they soon passed from among the powers of the earth, leaving behind them not a memorial of their proud and ephemeral destiny whilst other nations, which looked to the products of the soil for the elements of their strength, found in each successive year the unfailing sources of national aggrandizement and power. Of all the nations of antiquity, the Romans were most persistently devoted to agriculture, and many of the maxims taught by their experience, and transmitted to us by their distinguished writers, are not unworthy, even at this time, of the notice of the intelligent farmers of this valley. It was in their schools of country life—a _vita rustica_—as their own great orator informs us, that they imbibed those noble sentiments which rendered the Roman name more illustrious than all their famous victories, and there, that they acquired those habits of labor, frugality, justice and that high standard of moral virtue which made them the easy masters of their race.[148] A modern mind trained in the habit of analysis will be horrified by the number of large and unexamined phrases passing by in even this brief excerpt. “Permanent power of any nation”; “earlier and middle ages”; “cast a dazzling splendor across the pathway of time”; “proud and ephemeral destiny”; “noble sentiments which rendered the Roman name more illustrious”; and “high standards of moral virtue” are but a selection. Comparatively speaking, the tone of this oration is fairly subdued, but it is in the grand style, and these phrases are the medium. With this passage before us for reference, I wish to discuss one matter of effect, and one of cause or enabling condition. It will be quickly perceived that the phrases in question have resonances, both historical and literary, and that this resonance is what we have been calling spaciousness. Instead of the single note (prized for purposes of analysis) they are widths of sound and meaning; they tend to echo over broad areas and to call up generalized associations. This resonance is the interstice between what is said and the thing signified. In this way then the generality of the phrase may be definitely linked with an effect. But the second question is our principal interest: how was the orator able to use them with full public consent when he cannot do so today?