Excerpt from The Yale Literary Magazine, Vol. 45: January, 1880

What then, you ask, is my idea of this four years of pleasure and study? I have said pleasure and study. Let me hope that I Shall be able to defend this simple word arrangement, though in the inverse order. Doubt less the expressed aim of our presence here has been study in its restricted sense. Incidentally to the attain ment of this Object has been the greater or less amount of gain, which each one, according to individual taste and character, has received in outside branches. A necessary accompaniment of this general and special gain has been to nearly every one of us the birth into the real world of thought. To some this birth may have resulted in an nu settlement of mind and an upturning of child ideas. Such we cannot refrain from denominating weak or, if this seems too extravagant, singularly unfortunate. To the average man, I believe, it has Simply proved an expansion, an enlargement Of his mental horizon, the first glance Of his Short-sighted eyes through the magic glass; the Old objects which have been within his View since earliest childhood are closest, nearest, dearest to him but how much more clearly seen, and what a World of unseen wonders are spread before him for his life study. Let the one who feels himself on the verge of giving up his child ideas take heed. He is throwing away one of his purest sources of enjoyment. A sad saying was that of one Of the best exponents in our day, Of the intensely modern fashion Of cutting wholly loose from these early mind associations, when he forced himself to record the conviction, the great companion is dead. The mental supremacy of the cultured Greek lay in his retention of his mythological traditions, not in their gross forms but in the ennobling transfiguration Of them into symbols Of the beauties and wonders of nature.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.