And Franklin, - There May Be A Line For Him In The
Future Classical Dictionary, Recording What That Demigod Did, And
Referring Him To Some New Genealogy.
"Son of - - and - - .
He
aided the Americans to gain their independence, instructed
mankind in economy, and drew down lightning from the clouds."
The hidden significance of these fables which is sometimes
thought to have been detected, the ethics running parallel to the
poetry and history, are not so remarkable as the readiness with
which they may be made to express a variety of truths. As if
they were the skeletons of still older and more universal truths
than any whose flesh and blood they are for the time made to
wear. It is like striving to make the sun, or the wind, or the
sea symbols to signify exclusively the particular thoughts of our
day. But what signifies it? In the mythus a superhuman
intelligence uses the unconscious thoughts and dreams of men as
its hieroglyphics to address men unborn. In the history of the
human mind, these glowing and ruddy fables precede the noonday
thoughts of men, as Aurora the sun's rays. The matutine
intellect of the poet, keeping in advance of the glare of
philosophy, always dwells in this auroral atmosphere.
As we said before, the Concord is a dead stream, but its scenery
is the more suggestive to the contemplative voyager, and this day
its water was fuller of reflections than our pages even. Just
before it reaches the falls in Billerica, it is contracted, and
becomes swifter and shallower, with a yellow pebbly bottom,
hardly passable for a canal-boat, leaving the broader and more
stagnant portion above like a lake among the hills.
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