Wondering we come
into this lodge of watchmen, this office of espial; let us not retreat
astonished and ashamed. Let us go out of the hall door, and doubt never
but a good genius brought us in and will carry us out."
Now this is a prose poem, so beautiful that it seems hardly to need the
help of rhyme and metre to make it sing; and, as high art always must,
it covers a profound truth,--truth that lies at the foundation of all
tragedy,--namely, that we are obliged to trust time though time destroys
us; that we must trust our fellow men though they often deceive us; that
we must trust the ground we stand on though the earthquake devour us.
But Emerson does not say this, and I doubt if he anywhere says it. He
was too much of an optimist to perceive it. He wished all the stories he
read to turn out fortunately, and if they did not so much the worse for
them. Gladstone is the same kind of a man. He believes that the right
will always finally conquer; and so it may when the day of judgment
arrives and the affairs of the universe are at last wound up. It gives
him, as it did Emerson, a tremendous energy,--almost like fanaticism,
but it must in the nature of things affect his political judgment. The
lives of these two stretch nearly across the nineteenth century, and
their popularity is evidence that they represent their own time better
than most others.
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