’I steadily loved this ideal in my childhood, and this is the cause, probably, why I have always felt that man must know how to stand firm on the ground, before he can fly.  In vain for me are men more, if they are less, than Romans.  Dante was far greater than any Roman, yet I feel he was right to take the Mantuan as his guide through hell, and to heaven.

’Horace was a great deal to me then, and is so still.  Though his words do not abide in memory, his presence does:  serene, courtly, of darting hazel eye, a self-sufficient grace, and an appreciation of the world of stern realities, sometimes pathetic, never tragic.  He is the natural man of the world; he is what he ought to be, and his darts never fail of their aim.  There is a perfume and raciness, too, which makes life a banquet, where the wit sparkles no less that the viands were bought with blood.

’Ovid gave me not Rome, nor himself, but a view into the enchanted gardens of the Greek mythology.  This path I followed, have been following ever since; and now, life half over, it seems to me, as in my childhood, that every thought of which man is susceptible, is intimated there.  In those young years, indeed, I did not see what I now see, but loved to creep from amid the Roman pikes to lie beneath this great vine, and see the smiling and serene shapes go by, woven from the finest fibres of all the elements.  I knew not why, at that time,—­but I loved to get away from the hum of the forum, and the mailed clang of Roman speech, to these shifting shows of nature, these Gods and Nymphs born of the sunbeam, the wave, the shadows on the hill.

’As with Rome I antedated the world of deeds, so I lived in those Greek forms the true faith of a refined and intense childhood.  So great was the force of reality with which these forms impressed me, that I prayed earnestly for a sign,—­that it would lighten in some particular region of the heavens, or that I might find a bunch of grapes in the path, when I went forth in the morning.  But no sign was given, and I was left a waif stranded upon the shores of modern life!

’Of the Greek language, I knew only enough to feel that the sounds told the same story as the mythology;—­that the law of life in that land was beauty, as in Rome it was a stern composure.  I wish I had learned as much of Greece as of Rome,—­so freely does the mind play in her sunny waters, where there is no chill, and the restraint is from within out; for these Greeks, in an atmosphere of ample grace, could not be impetuous, or stern, but loved moderation as equable life always must, for it is the law of beauty.

’With these books I passed my days.  The great amount of study exacted of me soon ceased to be a burden, and reading became a habit and a passion.  The force of feeling,