[Letter to Professor Demmon December 16, 1871.]
... Since I entered public life, I have constantly aimed to find a little time to keep alive the spirit of my classical studies, and to resist that constant tendency, which all public men feel, to grow rusty in literary studies, and particularly in the classical studies. I have thought it better to select some one line of classical reading, and, if possible, do a little work on it each day. For this winter I am determined to review such parts of the Odes of Horace as I may be able to reach. And, as preliminary to that work, I have begun by reading up the bibliography of Horace.
The Congressional Library is very rich in materials for this study, and I am amazed to find how deep and universal has been the impress left on the cultivated mind of the world by Horace's writings.
The Student should study himself his relation to Society, to Nature and to Art—and above all, in all, and through all these, he should study the relations of Himself, Society, Nature, and Art to God the Author of them all.
Greek is perhaps the most perfect instrument of Thought ever invented by Man, and its Literature has never been equalled in purity of style and boldness of expression.
History is but the unrolled scroll of Prophecy. The world's history is a divine Poem, of which the history of every nation is a canto, and every man a word. Its strains have been pealing along down the centuries, and though there have been mingled the discords of warring cannon and dying men, yet to the Christian, Philosopher, and Historian—the humble listener—there has been a divine melody running through the song which speaks of hope and halcyon days to come.
The lesson of History is rarely learned by the actors themselves.
Theologians in all ages have looked out admiringly upon the material universe, and from its inanimate existences demonstrated the Power, Wisdom, and Goodness of God; but we know of no one who has demonstrated the same attributes from the History of the human race.
Mankind have been slow to believe that order reigns in the universe, that the world is a Cosmos, not a chaos.
The assertion of the reign of Law has been stubbornly resisted at every step. The divinities of Heathen superstition still linger in one form or another in the faith of the ignorant, and even many intelligent men shrink from the contemplation of one Supreme Will acting regularly, not fatuitously, through laws beautiful and simple, rather than through a fitful and capricious Providence.
English liberty to-day rests not so much on the government as on those rights which the people have wrested from the government. The rights of the Englishman outnumber the rights of the Englishman's king.
Poetry is the language of Freedom.
Liberty can be safe only when Suffrage is illuminated by education.