The art
which is associated with all civic pride and sacred principle; with
which men record their power--satisfy their enthusiasm--make sure
their defence--define and make dear their habitation. And in six
thousand years of building, what have we done? Of the greater part of
all that skill and strength, _no_ vestige is left, but fallen stones,
that encumber the fields and impede the streams. But, from this waste
of disorder, and of time, and of rage, what _is_ left to us?
Constructive and progressive creatures that we are, with ruling
brains, and forming hands, capable of fellowship, and thirsting for
fame, can we not contend, in comfort, with the insects of the forest,
or, in achievement, with the worm of the sea? The white surf rages in
vain against the ramparts built by poor atoms of scarcely nascent
life; but only ridges of formless ruin mark the places where once
dwelt our noblest multitudes. The ant and the moth have cells for each
of their young, but our little ones lie in festering heaps, in homes
that consume them like graves; and night by night, from the corners of
our streets, rises up the cry of the homeless--"I was a stranger, and
ye took me not in."[246]
Must it be always thus? Is our life for ever to be without
profit--without possession? Shall the strength of its generations be
as barren as death; or cast away their labour, as the wild fig-tree
casts her untimely figs?[247] Is it all a dream then--the desire of the
eyes and the pride of life--or, if it be, might we not live in nobler
dream than this? The poets and prophets, the wise men, and the
scribes, though they have told us nothing about a life to come, have
told us much about the life that is now.
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