ted chapels where a light shines from the Graal, to find by lonely
mountain meres the magic boat of Sir Galahad.

After once being initiated into the mysteries of Greece by Homer, the
work at Greek was no longer tedious. Herodotus was a charming and
humorous story-teller, and, as for Thucydides, his account of the
Sicilian Expedition and its ending was one of the very rare things in
literature which almost, if not quite, brought tears into one's eyes. Few
passages, indeed, have done that, and they are curiously discrepant. The
first book that ever made me cry, of which feat I was horribly ashamed,
was "Uncle Tom's Cabin," with the death of Eva, Topsy's friend. Then it
was trying when Colonel Newcome said _Adsum_, and the end of Socrates in
the _Phaedo_ moved one more than seemed becoming--these, and a passage in
the history of Skalagrim Lamb's Tail, and, as I said, the ruin of the
Athenians in the Syracusan Bay. I have read these chapters in an old
French version derived through the Italian from a Latin translation of
Thucydides. Even in this far-descended form, the tale keeps its pathos;
the calm, grave stamp of that tragic telling cannot be worn away by much
handling, by long time, by the many changes of human speech. "Others
too," says Nicias, in that fatal speech, when--

"_All was done that men may do_,
_And all was done in vain_,"--

"having achieved what men may, have borne what men must." This is the
very burden of life, and the last word of tragedy. For now all is vain:
courage, wisdom, piety, the bravery of Lamachus, the goodness of Nicias,
the brilliance of Alcibiades, all are expended, all wasted, nothing of
that brave venture abides, except torture, defeat, and death. No play
not poem of individual fortunes is so moving as this ruin of a people; no
modern story can stir us, with all its eloquence, like the brief gravity
of this ancient history. Nor can we find, at the last, any wisdom more
wise than that which bids us do what men may, and bear what men must.
Such are the lessons of the Greek, of the people who tried all things, in
the morning of the world, and who still speak to us of what they tried in
words which are the sum of human gaiety and gloom, of grief and triumph,
hope and despair. The world, since their day, has but followed in the
same round, which only seems new: has only made the same experiments, and
failed with the same failure, but less gallantly and less gloriously.