ring and poring in their one-windowed
chambers over the minute preciousness of the labored canvas; how are
they swept away and crushed into unnoticeable darkness! And in their
stead, as the walls of the dismal rooms that enclosed them, and us, are
struck by the four winds of Heaven, and rent away, and as the world
opens to our sight, lo! far back into all the depths of time, and forth
from all the fields that have been sown with human life, how the harvest
of the dragon's teeth is springing! how the companies of the gods are
ascending out of the earth! The dark stones that have so long been the
sepulchres of the thoughts of nations, and the forgotten ruins wherein
their faith lay charnelled, give up the dead that were in them; and
beneath the Egyptian ranks of sultry and silent rock, and amidst the dim
golden lights of the Byzantine dome, and out of the confused and cold
shadows of the Northern cloister, behold, the multitudinous souls come
forth with singing, gazing on us with the soft eyes of newly
comprehended sympathy, and stretching their white arms to us across the
grave, in the solemn gladness of everlasting brotherhood.

Sec. XXIX. The other danger to which, it was above said, we were primarily
exposed under our present circumstances of life, is the pursuit of vain
pleasure, that is to say, false pleasure; delight, which is not indeed
delight; as knowledge vainly accumulated, is not indeed knowledge. And
this we are exposed to chiefly in the fact of our ceasing to be
children. For the child does not seek false pleasure; its pleasures are
true, simple, and instinctive: but the youth is apt to abandon his early
and true delight for vanities,--seeking to be like men, and sacrificing
his natural and pure enjoyments to his pride. In like manner, it seems
to me that modern civilization sacrifices much pure and true pleasure to
various forms of ostentation from which it can receive no fruit.
Consider, for a moment, what kind of pleasures are open to human nature,
undiseased. Passing by the consideration of the pleasures of the higher
affections, which lie at the root of everything, and considering the
definite and practical pleasures of daily life, there is, first, the
pleasure of doing good; the greatest of all, only apt to be despised
from not being often enough tasted: and then, I know not in what order
to put them, nor does it matter,--the pleasure of gaining knowledge; the
pleasure of the excitement of imagination