a patchwork of uncontinued efforts, but a plan and a progress, as surely
as the Pilgrim embarkation at Delfshaven has a relation to the battle of
Gettysburg, and to the civil rights bill giving the colored man
permission to ride in a public conveyance and to be buried in a public
cemetery, so surely has the Parthenon some connection with your new State
capitol at Albany, and the daily life of the vine-dresser of the
Peloponnesus some lesson for the American day-laborer. The scholar is
said to be the torch-bearer, transmitting the increasing light from
generation to generation, so that the feet of all, the humblest and the
loveliest, may walk in the radiance and not stumble. But he very often
carries a dark lantern.

Not what is the use of Greek, of any culture in art or literature, but
what is the good to me of your knowing Greek, is the latest question of
the ditch-digger to the scholar--what better off am I for your learning?
And the question, in view of the interdependence of all members of
society, is one that cannot be put away as idle. One reason why the
scholar does not make the world of the past, the world of books, real to
his fellows and serviceable to them, is that it is not real to himself,
but a mere unsubstantial place of intellectual idleness, where he dallies
some years before he begins his task in life. And another reason is that,
while it may be real to him, while he is actually cultured and trained,
he fails to see or to feel that his culture is not a thing apart, and
that all the world has a right to share its blessed influence. Failing to
see this, he is isolated, and, wanting his sympathy, the untutored world
mocks at his super-fineness and takes its own rough way to rougher ends.
Greek art was for the people, Greek poetry was for the people; Raphael
painted his immortal frescoes where throngs could be lifted in thought
and feeling by them; Michael Angelo hung the dome over St. Peter's so
that the far-off peasant on the Campagna could see it, and the maiden