school, our delight in the hero, is the main fact to our purpose. All
these great and transcendent properties are ours. If we dilate in
beholding the Greek energy, the Roman pride, it is that we are already
domesticating the same sentiment. Let us find room for this great
guest in our small houses. The first step of worthiness will be to
disabuse us of our superstitious associations with places and times,
with number and size. Why should these words, Athenian, Roman, Asia,
and England, so tingle in the ear? Where the heart is, there the
muses, there the gods sojourn, and not in any geography of fame.
Massachusetts, Connecticut River, and Boston Bay, you think paltry
places, and the ear loves names of foreign and classic topography. But
here we are; and, if we will tarry a little, we may come to learn that
here is best. See to it only that thyself is here;--and art and
nature, hope and fate, friends, angels, and the Supreme Being, shall
not be absent from the chamber where thou sittest. Epaminondas,[348]
brave and affectionate, does not seem to us to need Olympus[349] to
die upon, nor the Syrian sunshine. He lies very well where he is. The
Jerseys[350] were handsome ground enough for Washington to tread, and
London streets for the feet of Milton.[351] A great man makes his
climate genial in the imagination of men, and its air the beloved
element of all delicate spirits. That country is the fairest, which is
inhabited by the noblest minds. The pictures which fill the
imagination in reading the actions of Pericles,[352] Xenophon,[353]
Columbus,[354] Bayard,[355] Sidney,[356] Hampden,[357] teach us how
needlessly mean our life is, that we, by the depth of our living,
should deck it with more than regal or national splendor, and act on
principles that should interest man and nature in the length of our
days.

13. We have seen or heard of many extraordinary young men, who never