ric
is enough, if one can only find in his soul and finish in his intellect
one of those jewels fit to sparkle "on the stretched forefinger of all
time." A coin, a ring, a string of verses. These last, and hardly
anything else does. Every century is an overloaded ship that must sink
at last with most of its cargo. The small portion of its crew that get
on board the new vessel which takes them off don't pretend to save a
great many of the bulky articles. But they must not and will not leave
behind the hereditary jewels of the race; and if you have found and cut a
diamond, were it only a spark with a single polished facet, it will stand
a better chance of being saved from the wreck than anything, no matter
what, that wants much room for stowage.

The pyramids last, it is true, but most of them have forgotten their
builders' names. But the ring of Thothmes III., who reigned some
fourteen hundred years before our era, before Homer sang, before the
Argonauts sailed, before Troy was built, is in the possession of Lord
Ashburnham, and proclaims the name of the monarch who wore it more than
three thousand years ago. The gold coins with the head of Alexander the
Great are some of them so fresh one might think they were newer than much
of the silver currency we were lately handling. As we have been quoting
from the poets this morning, I will follow the precedent, and give some
lines from an epistle of Pope to Addison after the latter had written,
but not yet published, his Dialogue on Medals. Some of these lines have
been lingering in my memory for a great many years, but I looked at the
original the other day and was so pleased with them that I got them by
heart. I think you will say they are singularly pointed and elegant.

"Ambition sighed; she found it vain to trust
The faithless column and the crumbling bust;
Huge moles, whose shadows stretched from shore to shore,
Their ruins perished, and their place no more!
Convinced, she now contracts her vast design,
And all her triumphs shrink into a coin.
A narrow orb each crowded conquest keeps,
Beneath her palm here sad Judaea weeps;
Now scantier limits the proud arch confine,
And scarce are seen the prostrate Nile or Rhine;
A small Euphrates through the piece is rolled,
And little eagles wave their wings in gold."

It is the same thing in literature. Write half a dozen folios full of
other people's ideas (as