Take from Italy such names as Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Michel
Angelo, and Raphael, and how much would still be wanting to the
completeness of her glory! How would the history of Spain look if
the leaves were torn out, on which are written the names of
Cervantes, Lope de Vega, and Calderon! What would be the fame of
Portugal, without her Camoens; of France, without her Racine, and
Rabelais, and Voltaire; or Germany, without her Martin Luther, her
Goethe, and Schiller!--Nay, what were the nations of old, without
their philosophers, poets, and historians! Tell me, do not these men
in all ages and in all places, emblazon with bright colors the
armorial bearings of their country? Yes, and far more than this; for
in all ages and all places they give humanity assurance of its
greatness; and say; Call not this time or people wholly barbarous;
for thus much, even then and there, could the human mind achieve!
But the boisterous world has hardlythought of acknowledging all
this. Therein it has shown itself somewhat ungrateful. Else, whence
the great reproach, the general scorn, the loud derision, with
which, to take a familiar example, the monks of the Middle Ages are
regarded! That they slept their lives away is most untrue. For in an
age when books were few,--so few, so precious, that they were often
chained to their oaken shelves with iron chains, like galley-slaves
to their benches, these men, with their laborious hands, copied upon
parchment all the lore and wisdom of the past, and transmitted it to
us. Perhaps it is not too much to say, that, but for these monks,
not one line of the classics would have reached our day. Surely,
then, we can pardon something to those superstitious ages, perhaps
even the mysticism of the scholastic philosophy, since, after all,
we can find no harm in it, only the mistaking of the possible for
the real, and the high aspirings of the human mind after a
long-sought and unknown somewhat. I think the name of Martin Luther,