These, however, and such as these, were the men who fabricated the first link in that chain of thought and beauty, which, stretching over the gulf of time and fastened to the skies, still holds up the nations of the earth from sinking into barbarism. Literature is degraded when contemplated as an art or as an amusement. It is a paradise, into which the best fruits of the soul, when arrived at their greatest maturity and beauty, are transplanted to bloom in immortal freshness and fragrance. It is the garner wherein the seeds of religion, virtue, morals, national greatness and individual happiness are preserved for the use of humanity. It is a gallery, where the likenesses of all the great and noble souls who have shed light and glory on the earth, are treasured up as the heirloom and palladium of the human race. It is impossible, therefore, for any but the most sordid minds to look back towards the venerable fathers of literature without a deep thrill of filial reverence and love, conjoined with the generous impulse and yearning desire to enlarge and add fresh brightness to the halo which encircles their names. They were not, what since too many have been, the instruments and panders to the pleasures of worldlings. Conscious of the holy mission wherewith, according to their creed, the father of gods and men had intrusted them, they stood forward as the apostles of truth, encircled by the majesty which a sense of divine inspiration must impart. They felt a harmony within their souls which, in manifesting itself, sought the aid of harmonious language; and hence the precepts of wisdom, distilling from their lips like honey from the honeycomb, moulded themselves naturally into verse, at whose sound the fountains of the great deep of knowledge were broken up, and the windows of heaven opened, and a deluge of philosophy and science and intellectual delight poured forth upon the amazed world.