five hundred years; and must prepare wick and oil for the
Neo-Platonists. He was mindful that there should be a thing called
the Renaissance in Italy; and must attend to what claims Pico di
Mirandola and others should make on him for spiritual food. He
must consider Holland of the seventeenth century, and England:
the Platonists of Cambridge and Amsterdam;--must think of Van
Helmont; and of a Vaughan who 'saw eternity the other night';
of a Traherne, who should never enjoy the world aright without
some illumination from his star; of a young Milton, _penseroso,_
out watching the Bear in some high lonely tower with thrice-great
Hermes, who should unsphere his spirit,

"..... to unfold
What worlds and what vast regions hold
The immortal mind that hath forsook
Her mansion in this fleshy nook";

--no, but he must think of all times coming; and how, whenever
there should be any restlessness against the tyranny of
materialism and dogma, a cry should go up for _Plato._--So let
Isocrates, the 'old man eloquent,'--let a many-worded not
unpeculant patriotic Demosthenes who knew nothing of the
God-world--attend to an Athens wherein the Gods were no longer
greatly interested;--the great Star Plato should rise up into
mid-heaven, and shine not in, but high over Athens and quite
apart from her; drawing from her indeed the external elements of
his culture, but the light and substance from that which was
potent in her no longer.

I said Greece served the future badly enough. Consider what might