THE PRESENT AGE 103 materialist may sneer at it as fustian, or as mere brute desperation. It was neither. It was the sense of duty conquering the sense of fear. It was courage of soul triumphant over impending dissolution of the body. It was a "crowded hour of glorious life" that indeed was "worth an age without a name "; worth it, not only to the actors in it, but to the whole human race. Those men had no reason to think, and did not think, that their death-song would ever be heard by other ears than those of their destroyers. Their deed was not bravado, but modest, loyal duty. And their voices will henceforth live in countless throbbing hearts, and their valor will make life and the world seem nobler to all their fellow-men. THE PRESENT AGE VICTOR HUGO Abridged from "Napoleon Le Petit," a political pamphlet written against Napoleon III. and published in 1852. Let us proclaim it firmly, proclaim it even in fall and in defeat, this age is the grandest of all ages; and do you know wherefore? know wherefore? Because it is the most benignant. This age enfranchises the slave in America, extinguishes in Europe the last brands of the stake, civilizes Turkey, penetrates the Koran with the Gospel, dignifies woman, and subordinates the right of the strongest to the right of the most just. This age proclaims the sovereignty of the citizen and the inviolability of life; it crowns the people and consecrates man. In art it possesses every kind of genius; majesty, grace, power, figure, splendor, depth, color, form, and style. In science it works all miracles; it makes a horse out of steam, a laborer out of the voltaic pile, a courier out of the electric fluid, and a painter of the sun; it opens upon the two infinites those two windows, the telescope on the infinitely great, the microscope on the infinitely little; and it finds in the first abyss the stars of heaven, and in the second abyss the insects which prove the existence of a God. Man no longer crawls upon the earth, he escapes from it; civilization takes to itself the wings of birds, and flies and whirls and alights joyously on all parts of the globe at once; the brotherhood of nations crosses the bounds of space and mingles in the eternal blue. THE NOBILITY OF LABOR ORVILLE DEWEY The Rev. Orville Dewey, D.D., (1794-1882) an American Unitarian clergyman and writer, was a well-known preacher and orator, and during his long life filled appointments in various New England cities. The following extract is taken from one of his published addresses. I call upon those whom I address to stand up for the nobility of labor. It is Heaven's great ordinance for human improvement. Let not that great ordinance be broken down. What do I say? It is broken down; and it has been broken down for ages. Let it then be built up again; here, if anywhere, on these shores of a THE NOBILITY OF LABOR 105 new world,—of a new civilization. But how, I may be asked, is it broken down? Do not men toil? it may be said. They do indeed toil; but they too generally do it because they must. Many submit to it as in some sort a degrading necessity; and they desire nothing so much on earth as escape from it. They fulfill the great law of labor in the letter, but break it in the spirit; fulfill it with the muscle, but break it with the mind. To some field of labor, mental or manual, every idler should fasten, as a chosen and coveted theatre of improvement. But so is he not impelled to do, under the teachings of our imperfect civilization. On the contrary, he sits down, folds his hands, and blesses himself in his idleness. This way of thinking is the heritage of the absurd and unjust feudal system under which serfs labored, and gentlemen spent their lives in fighting and feasting. It is time that this opprobrium of toil were done away. Ashamed to toil, art thou? Ashamed of thy dingy workshop and dusty labor-field; of thy hard hand, scarred with service more honorable than that of war; of thy soiled and weather-stained garments, on which mother Nature has embroidered, 'midst sun and rain, 'midst fire and steam, her own heraldic honors? Ashamed of these tokens and titles, and envious of the flaunting robes of imbecile idleness and vanity? It is treason to Nature; it is impiety to Heaven; it is breaking Heaven's great ordinance. Toil, I repeat, toil, either of the brain, of the heart, or of the hand, is the only true manhood, the only true nobility. 66 THE INFLUENCE OF ATHENS THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY Taken from the conclusion of Macaulay's essay on Mitford's History of Greece," published in Knight's Quarterly Magazine, November, 1824. All the triumphs of truth and genius over prejudice and power, in every country and in every age, have been the triumphs of Athens. Whenever a few great minds have made a stand against violence and fraud, in the cause of liberty and reason, there has been her spirit in the midst of them; inspiring, encouraging, and consoling; by the lonely lamp of Erasmus; by the restless bed of Pascal; in the tribune of Mirabeau; in the cell of Galileo; on the scaffold of Sidney. But who shall estimate her influence on private happiness? Who shall say how many thousands have been made wiser, happier, and better, by those pursuits in which she has taught mankind to engage; to how many the studies which took their rise from her have been wealth in poverty, liberty in bondage, health in sickness, society in solitude? Her power is indeed manifested at the bar, in the senate, in the field of battle, in the schools of philosophy. But these are not her glory. Wherever literature consoles sorrow, or assuages pain; wherever it brings gladness to eyes which fail with wakefulness and tears, and wait for the dark house and the long sleep,—there is exhibited, in its noblest form, the immortal influence of Athens. This is the gift of Athens to man. Her freedom ROME AND CARTHAGE 107 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 rivaled her greatness shall have shared her fate; when civilization and knowledge shall have fixed their abode in distant continents; when the scepter shall have passed away from England; when perhaps, travelers from distant regions shall in vain labor to decipher on some moldering pedestal the name of our proudest chief, shall hear savage hymns chanted 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 ten thousand masts, her influence and her glory would 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. ROME AND CARTHAGE VICTOR HUGO 66 The following extract is taken from a translation of a Fragment d'Histoire," a short historical essay which appeared in 1827. This essay was reprinted in 1834 in the volume of essays and miscellanies entitled "Littérature et Philosophie Mêlées.” Rome and Carthage! behold them drawing near for the struggle that is to shake the world! Carthage, |