Herodotus, the accurate and kindly, spake of that he saw,
And reaped his knowledge on the spot, in fertile fields of Egypt:
Lycurgus culled from every clime the golden fruits of justice;
And Plato roamed through foreign lands, to feed on truth in all.
For travel, conversant with Things, bringeth them in contact with the mind;
We breathe the wholesome atmosphere about ungarbled truth:
Pictures of fact are painted on the eye, to decorate the house of intellect,
Rather than visions of fancy, filling all the chambers with a vapour.
For, in Ideas, the great mind will exaggerate, and the lesser extenuate truth;
But in Things the one is chastened, and the other quickened, to equality: