ere.

Why talk of the shame of our ancestors? I want to talk of their honour
and glory. I want to talk, if I talk at all, about great times, about
noble epochs, noble movements, noble deeds, and noble folk; about times
in which the human race--it may be through many mistakes, alas! and sin,
and sorrow, and blood-shed--struggled up one step higher on those great
stairs which, as we hope, lead upward towards the far-off city of God;
the perfect polity, the perfect civilisation, the perfect religion, which
is eternal in the heavens.

Of great men, then, and noble deeds I want to speak. I am bound to do so
first, in courtesy to my hearers. For in choosing such a subject I took
for granted a nobleness and greatness of mind in them which can
appreciate and enjoy the contemplation of that which is lofty and heroic,
and that which is useful indeed, though not to the purses merely or the
mouths of men, but to their intellects and spirits; that highest
philosophy which, though she can (as has been sneeringly said of her)
bake no bread, she--and she alone, can at least do this--make men worthy
to eat the bread which God has given them.

I am bound to speak on such subjects, because I have never yet met, or
read of, the human company who did not require, now and then at least,
being reminded of such times and such personages--of whatsoever things
are just, pure, true, lovely, and of good report, if there be any manhood
and any praise to think, as St. Paul bids us all, of such things, that we
may keep up in our minds as much as possible a lofty standard, a pure
ideal, instead of sinking to the mere selfish standard which judges all
things, even those of the world to come, by profit and by loss, and into
that sordid frame of mind in which a man grows to believe that the world
is constructed of bricks and timber, and kept going by the price of
stocks.

We are all tempted, and the easier and more prosperous we are, the more
we are tempted, to fall into that sordid and shallow frame of mind.
Sordid even when its projects are most daring, its outward luxuries most
refined; and shallow, even when most acute, when priding itself most on
its knowledge of human nature, and of the secret springs which, so it
dreams, move the actions and make the history of nations and of men. All
are tempted that way, even the noblest-hearted. _Adhaesit pavimento
venter_, says the old psalmist. I am growing like the snake, crawling in
the dust, and