virtuous person.
Meanwhile, keeping fast to my intention of talking to you only about
things worthy of your interest and respect, because they are good, true,
and beautiful, I wish to tell you what the Stage was once, in a republic
of the past--what it may be again, I sometimes dream, in some republic of
the future.

Let me take you back in fancy some 2314 years--440 years before the
Christian era, and try to sketch for you--alas! how clumsily--a great,
though tiny people, in one of their greatest moments--in one of the
greatest moments, it may be, of the human race. For surely it is a great
and a rare moment for humanity, when all that is loftiest in it--when
reverence for the Unseen powers, reverence for the heroic dead, reverence
for the father-land; and that reverence, too, for self, which is
expressed in stateliness and self-restraint, in grace and courtesy; when
all these, I say, can lend themselves, even for a day, to the richest
enjoyment of life--to the enjoyment of beauty in form and sound, and of
relaxation, not brutalizing, but ennobling.

Rare, alas! have such seasons been in the history of poor humanity. But
when they have come, they have lifted it up one stage higher thenceforth.
Men, having been such once, may become such again; and the work which
such times have left behind them becomes immortal.

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.

Let me take you to the then still unfinished theatre of Athens, hewn out
of the limestone rock on the south-east slope of the Acropolis.

Above are the new marble buildings of the Parthenon, rich with the
statues and bas-reliefs of Phidias and his scholars, gleaming white
against the blue sky, with the huge bronze statue of Athene Promachos,
fifty feet in height, towering up among the temples and colonnades. In
front, and far below, gleams the blue sea, and Salamis beyond.

And there are gathered the people of Athens--50,000 of them, possibly,
when the theatre was complete and full. If it be fine, they all wear
garlands on their heads. If the sun be too hot, they wear wide-brimmed
straw hats. And if a storm comes on, they will take refuge in the
porticos beneath; not without wine and cakes, for what they have come to
see will last for many an hour, and they intend to feast their eyes and
ears from sunrise to sunset. On the highest seats are slaves and
freedmen, below them the free citizens; and on the lowest seats of all
are the dignitaries of the republi