rief,
And trembling faith is changed to fear,
The murmuring wind, the quivering leaf
Shall softly tell us, Thou art near!

On Thee we fling our burdening woe,
O Love Divine, forever dear,
Content to suffer, while we know,
Living and dying, Thou art near!

XII

A young fellow, born of good stock, in one of the more thoroughly
civilized portions of these United States of America, bred in good
principles, inheriting a social position which makes him at his ease
everywhere, means sufficient to educate him thoroughly without taking
away the stimulus to vigorous exertion, and with a good opening in some
honorable path of labor, is the finest sight our private satellite has
had the opportunity of inspecting on the planet to which she belongs. In
some respects it was better to be a young Greek. If we may trust the old
marbles, my friend with his arm stretched over my head, above there, (in
plaster of Paris,) or the discobolus, whom one may see at the principal
sculpture gallery of this metropolis,--those Greek young men were
of supreme beauty. Their close curls, their elegantly set heads,
column-like necks, straight noses, short, curled lips, firm chins,
deep chests, light flanks, large muscles, small joints, were finer than
anything we ever see. It may well be questioned whether the human shape
will ever present itself again in a race of such perfect symmetry. But
the life of the youthful Greek was local, not planetary, like that of
the young American. He had a string of legends, in place of our Gospels.
He had no printed books, no newspaper, no steam caravans, no forks, no
soap, none of the thousand cheap conveniences which have become matters
of necessity to our modern civilization. Above all things, if he aspired
to know as well as to enjoy, he found knowledge not diffused everywhere
about him, so that a day's labor would buy him more wisdom than a
year could master, but held in private hands, hoarded in precious
manuscripts, to be sought for only as gold is sought in narrow fissures,
and in the beds of brawling streams. Never, since man came into this
atmosphere of oxygen and azote, was there anything like the condition of
the young American of the nineteenth century. Having in possession or in
prospect the best part of half a world, with all its climates and soils
to choose from; equipped with wings of fire and smoke than fly with
him day and night, so that he counts his journ