ay
they take, sweep with them the wills of men,--will rise before his mind.
His young fancy will endow them with preternatural qualities; and he
will yearn to draw near, to mingle with them and to catch the secret of
their divine power. The germ of the godlike within his bosom bursts and
springs. What they were, why may not he also become? What bars are
thrown athwart his path, what obstacles hem his way, which, whoever in
any age has excelled, has not had to break down and surmount? Here the
wise teacher comes to cheer him, to tell him his faith is not wrong, his
hope not without promise of attainment if he but trust himself, and bend
his whole mind to the task; that whatever goal within the scope of human
power, the will sets to itself, it may reach.

In order to develop, strengthen, and confirm this high mood, this noble
temper, let him by all means be made acquainted with the language and
genius of Greece. Here he will be introduced to a world of thought and
sentiment almost as fresh, as fair and many-sided as Nature
herself,--the fragrant blossoming in myriad hues and forms of the life
and mind of the most richly endowed portion of the human race. Not only
are the Greeks the most highly-gifted of all people, but in this
classical age they have also this special charm and power,--that the
keenest intellectual faculties are in them united with the feelings,
hopes, and fancies of a noble and great-hearted youth. Even Socrates and
Plato talk like high-souled boys who can see the world only in the light
of ideals, for whom what the mind beholds and the heart loves is alone
real. How healthfully they look on life, with what delight they breathe
the air! What fine contempt have they not of death, thinking no fortune
so good as that which comes to the hero who dies in a worthy cause!
There is Athens, already the world's university; but no books, no
libraries, no lecture-halls, only great teachers who walk about followed
by a crowd of youths eager to drink in their words. Here is the
Acropolis, with its snow-white temples and propylaeum, fair and chaste as
though they had been built in heaven and gently lowered to this Attic
mound by the hands of angels. There in the Parthenon are the sculptures
of Phidias, and yonder in the temple of the Dioscuri, the paintings of
Polygnotus,--ideal beauty bodied forth to lure the souls of men to
unseen and eternal worlds. If they turn to the east, the isles of the
AEgean look up to them l