If we consider merely the subtlety of disquisition, the force of
imagination, the perfect energy and elegance of expression, which
characterize the great works of Athenian genius, we must pronounce
them intrinsically most valuable; but what shall we say when we
reflect that from these had sprung, directly or indirectly, all the
noblest creations of the human intellect; that from hence were the
vast accomplishments and the brilliant fancy of Cicero, the withering
fire of Juvenal; the plastic imagination of Dante; the humor of
Cervantes; the comprehension of Bacon, the wit of Butler; the supreme
and universal excellence of Shakespeare? All the triumphs of truth and
genius over prejudice and power, in every country and in every age,
have been the triumphs of Athens. Wherever a few great minds have made
a stand against violence and fraud, in the cause of liberty and
reason, there has been her spirit in the midst of them; inspiring,
encouraging, consoling--by the lonely lamp of Erasmus; by the restless
bed of Pascal; in the tribune of Mirabeau; in the cell of Galileo; on
the scaffold of Sidney. But who shall estimate her influence on
private happiness? Who shall say how many thousands have been made
wiser, happier, and better by those pursuits in which she has taught
mankind to engage; to how many the studies which took their rise from
her have been wealth in poverty--liberty in bondage--health in
sickness--society in solitude. Her power is indeed manifested at the
bar; in the senate; in the field of battle; in the schools of
philosophy. But these are not her glory. Wherever literature consoles
sorrow, or assuages pain--wherever it brings gladness to eyes which
fail with wakefulness and tears, and ache for the dark house and the
long sleep--there is exhibited, in its noblest form, the immortal
influence of Athens.
The dervish in the Arabian tale did not hesitate to abandon to his
comrade the camels with their load of jewels and gold, while he
retained the casket of that juice which enabled him to behold at a
glance all the hidden riches of the universe. Surely it is no
exaggeration to say that no external advantage is to be compared with
that purification of the intellectual eye which gives us to
contemplate the infinite wealth of the mental world; all the hoarded
treasures of the primeval dynasties, all the shapeless ore of its yet
unexplored mines. This is the gift of Athens to man. Her freedom and
her power have for more than twenty centuries been annihilated; her
people have degenerated into timid slaves; her language into a
barbarous jargon; her temples have been given up to the successive
depredations of Romans, Turks, and Scotchmen;[60] but her intellectual
empire is imperishable. And when those who have rivaled her greatness
shall have shared her fate: when civilization and knowledge shall have
fixt their abode in distant continents; when the scepter shall have
passed away from England; when perhaps, travelers from distant regions
shall in vain labor to decipher on some moldering pedestal the name of
our proudest chief; shall hear savage hymns chanted to some misshaped
idol over the ruined dome of our proudest temple: and shall see a
single naked fisherman wash his nets in the river of the ten thousand
masts--her influence and her glory will still survive--fresh in
eternal youth, exempt from mutability and decay, immortal as the
intellectual principle from which they derived their origin, and over
which they exercise their control.
V