ustice, for charity; the foundation
of friendship and love and of the heroism and grandeur which belong to
acts of self-reliance. It is remarkable that involuntarily we always
read as superior beings. Universal history, the poets, the romancers,
do not in their stateliest pictures,--in the sacerdotal, the imperial
palaces, in the triumphs of will or of genius,--anywhere lose our ear,
anywhere make us feel that we intrude, that this is for better men; but
rather is it true that in their grandest strokes we feel most at home.
All that Shakspeare says of the king, yonder slip of a boy that reads
in the corner feels to be true of himself. We sympathize in the great
moments of history, in the great discoveries, the great resistances, the
great prosperities of men;--because there law was enacted, the sea was
searched, the land was found, or the blow was struck, for us, as we
ourselves in that place would have done or applauded.

We have the same interest in condition and character. We honor the rich
because they have externally the freedom, power, and grace which we feel
to be proper to man, proper to us. So all that is said of the wise man
by Stoic or Oriental or modern essayist, describes to each reader his
own idea, describes his unattained but attainable self. All literature
writes the character of the wise man. Books, monuments, pictures,
conversation, are portraits in which he finds the lineaments he is
forming. The silent and the eloquent praise him and accost him, and
he is stimulated wherever he moves, as by personal allusions. A true
aspirant therefore never needs look for allusions personal and laudatory
in discourse. He hears the commendation, not of himself, but, more
sweet, of that character he seeks, in every word that is said concerning
character, yea further in every fact and circumstance,--in the running
river and the rustling corn. Praise is looked, homage tendered, love
flows, from mute nature, from the mountains and the lights of the
firmament.

These hints, dropped as it were from sleep and night, let us use in
broad day. The student is to read history actively and not passively; to
esteem his own life the text, and books the commentary. Thus compelled,
the Muse of history will utter oracles, as never to those who do not
respect themselves. I have no expectation that any man will read history
aright who thinks that what was done in a remote age, by men whose names
have resounded far, has any deeper sens