Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1871 edition. Excerpt:... legacy bequeathed to us by antiquity a collection is found, the richest we have, of captious arguments and paradoxes; their subtleties would have been confined to a narrow field could they not have pushed their way as well on the side of error as on that of truth. Such is the intellectual finesse which, transferred from reasoning to literature, fashioned the "Attic" taste, that is to say, an appreciation of niceties, a sportive grace, delicate irony, simplicity of style, ease of discourse and beauty of demonstration. It is said that Apelles went to see Protogenes, and, not caring to leave his name, took a pencil and drew a fine curved line on a panel ready at hand. Protogenes, on returning, looked at the mark and exclaimed, " No one but Apelles could have traced that!" then, seizing the pencil, he drew around it a second line still more refined and extended, and ordered it to be shown to the stranger. Apelles came back, and, mortified to see himself surpassed, intersected the first two contours by a third, the delicacy of which exceeded both. When Pro togenes saw it, he exclaimed: "I am vanquished, let me embrace my master 1" This legend furnishes us with the least imperfect idea of the Greek mind. We have the subtle line within which it circumscribes the contours of things, and the native dexterity, precision and agility with which it circulates amidst ideas to distinguish and bind them together. in. This, however, is but one feature; there is another. Let us revert back to the soil and we shall see the second added to the first. This time, again, it is the, physical structure of the country which has stamped the intellect of the race with that which we find in its labors and in its history. There is in this country nothing of the vast...