Its
Education Has Always Been Liberal, And Its Implied Wit Can Endow
A College.
The world, which the Greeks called Beauty, has been
made such by being gradually divested of every ornament which was
not fitted to endure.
The Sibyl, "speaking with inspired mouth,
smileless, inornate, and unperfumed, pierces through centuries by
the power of the god." The scholar might frequently emulate the
propriety and emphasis of the farmer's call to his team, and
confess that if that were written it would surpass his labored
sentences. Whose are the truly _labored_ sentences? From the
weak and flimsy periods of the politician and literary man, we
are glad to turn even to the description of work, the simple
record of the month's labor in the farmer's almanac, to restore
our tone and spirits. A sentence should read as if its author,
had he held a plough instead of a pen, could have drawn a furrow
deep and straight to the end. The scholar requires hard and
serious labor to give an impetus to his thought. He will learn
to grasp the pen firmly so, and wield it gracefully and
effectively, as an axe or a sword. When we consider the weak and
nerveless periods of some literary men, who perchance in feet and
inches come up to the standard of their race, and are not
deficient in girth also, we are amazed at the immense sacrifice
of thews and sinews. What! these proportions, - these bones, - and
this their work! Hands which could have felled an ox have hewed
this fragile matter which would not have tasked a lady's fingers!
Can this be a stalwart man's work, who has a marrow in his back
and a tendon Achilles in his heel?
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 109 of 422
Words from 30047 to 30335
of 116321
