It may be that we are all Heathens at heart.
The enthusiast adores Greece--not knowing that Greece monarchies over him, only because it is a miraculous mirror that resplendently and more beautifully reflects--himself--
"Divisque videbit Permixtos Heroas, et IPSE, videbitur illis."
O life of old, and long, long ago! In the meek, solemn, soul-stilling hush of Academic Bowers!
My youth returns. Come, spirits of the world that has been! Throw open the valvules of these your shrines, in which you stand around me, niched side by side, in visible presence, in this cathedral-like Library! I read Historian, Poet, Orator, Voyager--a life that slid silently away in shades, or that bounded like a bark over the billows. I lift up the curtain of all ages--I stand under all skies--on the Capitol--on the Acropolis. Like that magician whose spirit, with a magical word, could leave his own bosom to inhabit another, I take upon myself every mode of existence. I read Thucydides, and I would be a Historian--Demosthenes, and I would be an Orator--Homer, and I dread to believe myself called to be, in some shape or other, a servant of the Muse. Heroes and Hermits of Thought--Seers of the Invisible--Prophets of the Ineffable--Hierophants of profitable mysteries--Oracles of the Nations--Luminaries of that spiritual Heaven! I bid ye, hail!
The fit is on him--he has not the slightest idea that he is in Deeside.
Ay--from the beginning a part of the race have separated themselves from the dusty, and the dust-devoured, turmoil of Action to Contemplation. Have thought--known--worshipped! And such knowledge Books keep. Books now crumbling like Towers and Pyramids--now outlasting them! Books that, from age to age, and all the sections of mankind helping, build up the pile of Knowledge--a trophied Citadel. He who can read Books as they should be read, peruses the operation of the Creator in his conscious, and in his unconscious Works, which yet we call upon to join, as if conscious, in our worship. Yet why--oh! why all this pains to attain that, through the labour of ages, which in the dewy, sunny prime of morn, one thrill of transport gives to me and to the Lark alike, summoning, lifting both heavenwards? Ah! perchance because the dewy, sunny prime does not last through the day! Because light poured into the eyes, and sweet breath inhaled, are not the whole of man's life here below--and because there is an Hereafter!