that purification of the intellectual eye which gives us to
contemplate the infinite wealth of the mental world, all the hoarded
treasures of its primeval dynasties, all the shapeless ore of its yet
unexplored mines. This is the gift of Athens to man.

Her freedom and her power have, for more than twenty centuries, been
annihilated; her people have degenerated into timid slaves; her
language, into a barbarous jargon; her temples have been given up to
the successive depredations of Romans, Turks, and Scotchmen; but her
intellectual empire is imperishable.

And when those who have rivalled her greatness shall have shared her
fate; when civilization and knowledge shall have fixed their abode in
distant continents; when the sceptre shall have passed away from
England; when, perhaps, travellers from distant regions shall in vain
labour to decipher on some mouldering pedestal the name of our
proudest chief, shall hear savage hymns chaunted to some misshapen
idol over the ruined dome of our proudest temple, and shall see a
single naked fisherman wash his nets in the river of the ten thousand
masts,--her influence and her glory will still survive,--fresh in
eternal youth, exempt from mutability and decay, immortal as the
intellectual principle from which they derived their origin, and over
which they exercise their control.

--_Macaulay_

Illustrate from this lesson the principle of Inflection
as applied to (1) a series of words parallel in
construction; (2) rhetorical questions.

How should the principal clause in the last paragraph be
made prominent by the voice? (Introduction, p. 33.)

* * * * *

NATIONAL MORALITY

1. I believe there is no permanent greatness to a nation except it be
based upon morality. I do not care for military greatness or military
renown. I care for the condition of the people among whom I live.
There is no man in England who is less likely to speak irreverently of
the Crown and Monarchy of England than I am; but crowns, coronets,
mitres, military display, the pomp of war, wide colonies, and a huge
empire, are, in my view, all trifles light as air, and not worth
considering, unless with them you can have a fair share of comfort,
contentment, and happiness, among the great body of the people.
Palaces, baronial castles, great halls, stately mansions, do not make
a nation. The nation in every country dwells in the cottage; and
unless the light