Nature is the armory of genius. Cities serve it poorly; books and colleges at second hand; the eye craves the spectacle of the horizon, of mountain, ocean, river and plain, the clouds and stars: actual contact with the elements, sympathy with the seasons as these rise and roll. And whoever will strike bold strokes for institutions and literature, must be often afoot with nature and thought in his eye for grasping the select rhetoric for his theme.
[C] "It might be thought serious trifling," says the accomplished Bishop Berkeley, "to tell my readers that the greatest of men had ever a high esteem of Plato, whose writings are the touchstone of a hasty and shallow mind, whose philosophy has been the admiration of ages; which supplied patriots, magistrates and lawgivers to the most flourishing states, as well as fathers of the church and doctors of the schools. Albeit, in these days, the depths of that old learning are rarely fathomed. And yet it were happy for these lands if our young nobility and gentry, instead of modern maxims would imbibe the notions of the great men of antiquity. But in these loose times many an empty head is shook at Aristotle and Plato, as well as the Holy Scriptures. Certainly, where a people are well educated, the art of piloting a state is best learned from the writings of Plato."
[D] "We learn languages," says Luther, "much better by way of mouth at home, in the street, than out of books. Letters are dead words; the utterances of the mouth, are living words, which in writing can never stand forth so distinct and excellent, as the soul of man bodies them forth through the mouth. Tell me where was there ever a language, which men could learn to speak with correctness and propriety by the rules of grammar. Yet let none think or conclude from all this, that I would reject the grammars altogether."
VI.
BOOKS.
"As great a store Have we of books as bees of herbs, or more, And the great task to try them, know the good, To discern weeds and judge of wholesome food, Is a rare scant performance."
Daniel.
