It spends the
mornings and the evenings, and makes such an impression on us
overnight as to awaken us before dawn, and its influence lingers
around us like a fragrance late into the day. It conveys a new
gloss to the meadows and the depths of the wood, and its spirit,
like a more subtile ether, sweeps along with the prevailing winds
of a country. The very locusts and crickets of a summer day are
but later or earlier glosses on the Dherma Sastra of the Hindoos,
a continuation of the sacred code. As we have said, there is an
orientalism in the most restless pioneer, and the farthest west
is but the farthest east. While we are reading these sentences,
this fair modern world seems only a reprint of the Laws of Menu
with the gloss of Culluca. Tried by a New England eye, or the
mere practical wisdom of modern times, they are the oracles of a
race already in its dotage, but held up to the sky, which is the
only impartial and incorruptible ordeal, they are of a piece with
its depth and serenity, and I am assured that they will have a
place and significance as long as there is a sky to test them by.
Pages:
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234