I remember a few sentences which spring like the sward in its
native pasture, where its roots were never disturbed, and not as
if spread over a sandy embankment; answering to the poet's
prayer,

"Let us set so just
A rate on knowledge, that the world may trust
The poet's sentence, and not still aver
Each art is to itself a flatterer."

But, above all, in our native port, did we not frequent the
peaceful games of the Lyceum, from which a new era will be dated
to New England, as from the games of Greece. For if Herodotus
carried his history to Olympia to read, after the cestus and the
race, have we not heard such histories recited there, which since
our countrymen have read, as made Greece sometimes to be
forgotten?--Philosophy, too, has there her grove and portico, not
wholly unfrequented in these days.

Lately the victor, whom all Pindars praised, has won another
palm, contending with

"Olympian bards who sung
Divine ideas below,
Which always find us young,
And always keep us so."

What earth or sea, mountain or stream, or Muses' spring or grove,
is safe from his all-searching ardent eye, who drives off