Not feeling any enthusiasm myself about Athens, my bounden duty of
course is clear, to sneer and laugh heartily at all who have. In
fact, what business has a lawyer, who was in Pump Court this day
three weeks, and whose common reading is law reports or the
newspaper, to pretend to fall in love for the long vacation with
mere poetry, of which I swear a great deal is very doubtful, and to
get up an enthusiasm quite foreign to his nature and usual calling
in life? What call have ladies to consider Greece "romantic," they
who get their notions of mythology from the well-known pages of
"Tooke's Pantheon"? What is the reason that blundering Yorkshire
squires, young dandies from Corfu regiments, jolly sailors from
ships in the harbour, and yellow old Indians returning from
Bundelcund, should think proper to be enthusiastic about a country
of which they know nothing; the mere physical beauty of which they
cannot, for the most part, comprehend; and because certain
characters lived in it two thousand four hundred years ago? What
have these people in common with Pericles, what have these ladies
in common with Aspasia (O fie)? Of the race of Englishmen who come
wandering about the tomb of Socrates, do you think the majority
would not have voted to hemlock him? Yes: for the very same
superstition which leads men by the nose now, drove them onward in
the days when the lowly husband of Xantippe died for daring to
think simply and to speak the truth. I know of no quality more
magnificent in fools than their faith: that perfect consciousness
they have, that they are doing virtuous and meritorious actions,
when they are performing acts of folly, murdering Socrates, or
pelting Aristides with holy oyster-shells--all for Virtue's sake;