158 INDOOR STUDIES 



There is a glint of it in this passage, which might 

 have been written to comfort John Brown, or reas- 

 sure a certain much-ahused. poet, had it not been 

 before the fact, a prophecy and not a counsel : — 



" Adhere to your own act, and congratulate your- 

 self if you have done something strange and extrav- 

 agant, and broken the monotony of a decorous age." 



Here it takes another key : — 



"If we dilate on beholding the Greek energy, 

 the Koman pride, it is that we are already domes- 

 ticating the same sentiment. Let us find room for 

 this great guest in our small houses. The first 

 step of worthiness will be to disabuse us of our 

 superstitious associations with jplaces and times, 

 with number and size. Why should these words, 

 Athenian, Eoman, Asia, and England, so tingle in 

 the ear? Where the heart is, there the muses, 

 there the gods sojourn, and not in any geography 

 of fame. Massachusetts, Connecticut Eiver, and 

 Boston Bay you think paltry places, and the ear 

 loves names of foreign and classical topography. 

 But here we are; and, if we wUl tarry a little, 

 we may come to learn that here is best. See to it 

 only that thyself is here, and art and nature, hope 

 and fate, friends, angels, and the Supreme Being 

 shall not be absent from the chamber where thou 

 sittest. " 



Half the essays are to this tune. "Books," he 

 said, "are for nothing but to inspire; " and in writ- 

 ing his own he had but one purpose in view : to be, 

 as Arnold so well says, "the friend and aider of 



