

whole. The morning itself was a new 

 birth of nature, full of promise and proph- 

 ecy ; one of those hours in which only the 

 greatest and noblest things are credible, in 

 which one rejects unfaith and doubt and 

 all lesser and meaner things as dreams of 

 a night from which there has come an 

 eternal awakening ; a day such as Emerson 

 had in thought when he wrote : " The 

 scholar must look long for the right hour 

 for Plato's Timaeus. At last the elect 

 morning arrives, the early dawn a few 

 lights conspicuous in the heaven, as of a 

 world just created and still becoming 

 and in its wide leisure we dare open that 

 book. There are days when the great are 

 near us, when there is no frown on their 

 brow, no condescension even; when they 

 take us by the hand, and we share their 

 thought." When such a morning dawns, 

 one demands, by right of his own nature, 

 the pilotage of great thoughts to some 

 height whence the whole world will lie 

 before him ; one knows by unclouded in- 

 sight that life is greater than all his dreams,^ 

 115 



