Again: if we ever become wise enough to dress consistently and
gracefully, to make health a principal object in education, and to
render our streets beautiful with art, the external charm of past
history will in great measure disappear. There is no essential reason,
because we live after the fatal seventeenth century, that we should
never again be able to confess interest in sculpture, or see
brightness in embroidery; nor, because now we choose to make the night
deadly with our pleasures, and the day with our labours, prolonging
the dance till dawn, and the toil to twilight, that we should never
again learn how rightly to employ the sacred trusts of strength,
beauty, and time. Whatever external charm attaches itself to the past,
would then be seen in proper subordination to the brightness of
present life; and the elements of romance would exist, in the earlier
ages, only in the attraction which must generally belong to whatever
is unfamiliar; in the reverence which a noble nation always pays to
its ancestors; and in the enchanted light which races, like
individuals, must perceive in looking back to the days of their
childhood.
Again: the peculiar levity with which natural scenery Is regarded by a
large number of modern minds cannot be considered as entirely
characteristic of the age, inasmuch as it never can belong to its
greatest intellects.
Pages:
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178