The four first acts already past,
A fifth shall close the drama with the day:
Time's noblest offspring is the last."

This extraordinary prophecy may be considered only as the result of long
foresight and uncommon sagacity; of a foresight and sagacity stimulated,
nevertheless, by excited feeling and high enthusiasm. So clear a vision
of what America would become was not founded on square miles, or on
existing numbers, or on any common laws of statistics. It was an
intuitive glance into futurity; it was a grand conception, which they
have hitherto so hopelessly mismanaged, you must expect to go on from
had to worse; you must expect to lose the little prestige which you
retain; you must expect to find in other portions of the world the
results of the lower consideration that you occupy in the eyes of
mankind; you must expect to be drawn, on, degree by degree, step by
step, under the cover of plausible excuses, under the cover of highly
philanthropic sentiments, to irreparable disasters, and to disgrace that
it will be impossible to efface. LORD SALISBURY.

From "Speech on the Abandonment of General Gordon."

* * * * *

You will pardon me, gentlemen, if I say I think that we have need of a
more rigorous scholastic rule; such an asceticism, I mean, as only the
hardihood and devotion of the scholar himself can enforce. We live in
the sun and on the surface--a thin, plausible, superficial existence,
and talk of muse and prophet, of art and creation. But out of our
shallow and frivolous way of life, how can greatness ever grow? Come
now, let us go and be dumb. Let us sit with our hands on our mouths, a