Nor, since the world is wide, and now being rapidly united by steam into one country, does the objection to these things, on account of the room they take up, seem so great as formerly. In the million of square miles of the globe there is room enough for all sorts of things.
With such reflections the lover of the picturesque may comfort himself, hoping that he is not sinning against the useful in his admiration of the beautiful.
One great achievement of the millennium, I trust, will be in uniting these two elements, which have ever been contending. There was great significance in the old Greek fable which represented Venus as the divinely-appointed helpmeet of Vulcan, and yet always quarrelling with him.
We can scarce look at the struggling, earth-bound condition of useful labor through the world without joining in the beautiful aspiration of our American poet,--
"Surely, the wiser time shall come When this fine overplus of might, No longer sullen, slow, and dumb, Shall leap to music and to light.
In that new childhood of the world Life of itself shall dance and play, Fresh blood through Time's shrunk veins be hurled, And labor meet delight half way."[M]
In the new state of society which we are trying to found in America, it must be our effort to hasten the consummation. These great estates of old countries may keep it for their share of the matter to work out perfect models, while we will seize the ideas thus elaborated, and make them the property of the million.
As we were going out, we stopped a little while at the porter's lodge to look at some relics.
Now, I dare say that you have been thinking, all the while, that these stories about the wonderful Guy are a sheer fabrication, or, to use a convenient modern term, a myth. Know, then, that the identical armor belonging to him is still preserved here; to wit, the sword, about seven feet long, a shield, helmet, breastplate, and tilting pole, together with his porridge pot, which holds one hundred and twenty gallons, and a large fork, as they call it, about three feet long; I am inclined to think this must have been his toothpick! His sword weighs twenty pounds.
There is, moreover, a rib of the mastodon cow which he killed, hung up for the terror of all refractory beasts of that name in modern days.