By Poetry We Mean The Art Of

In The Infancy Of Civilization, When Our Island Was As Savage As New Guinea, When Letters And Arts Were Still Unknown To Athens, When Scarcely A Thatched Roofed Hut Stood On What Was Later The Site Of Rome, This Contemned People Had Their Fenced Cities And Cedar Palaces, Their Splendid Temple, Their Fleets Of Merchant Ships, Their Schools Of Sacred Learning, Their Great Statesmen And Soldiers, Their Natural Philosophers, Their Historians And Their Poets.

The Highest Intellects, Like The Tops Of Mountains, Are The First To Catch And To Reflect The Dawn.

Nothing Is So Galling To A People Not Broken In From Birth As A Paternal, Or, In Other Words, A Meddling Government, A Government Which Tells Them What To Read, And Say, And Eat, And Drink And Wear.

We Do Not Think It Necessary To Prove That A Quack Medicine Is Poison; Let The Vender Prove It To Be Sanative.

Mere Negation, Mere Epicurean Infidelity, As Lord Bacon Most Justly Observes, Has Never Disturbed The Peace Of The World. It Furnishes No Motive For Action; It Inspires No Enthusiasm; It Has No Missionaries, No Crusades, No Martyrs.