ll again study Greek, as Lady Jane Grey did; I believe
that in that chain of forts, with which the fair host of the Amazons are
now engirdling our English universities,--I find that here in America,
in colleges like Smith College in Massachusetts, and Vassar College in
the State of New York, and in the happy families of the mixed
universities out West,--they are studying it already.

_Defuit una mihi symmetria prisca_,--"The antique symmetry was the one
thing wanting to me," said Leonardo da Vinci; and he was an Italian. I
will not presume to speak for the Americans, but I am sure that, in the
Englishman, the want of this admirable symmetry of the Greeks is a
thousand times more great and crying than in any Italian. The results
of the want show themselves most glaringly, perhaps, in our
architecture, but they show themselves, also, in all our art. _Fit
details strictly combined, in view of a large general result nobly
conceived_; that is just the beautiful _symmetria prisca_ of the Greeks,
and it is just where we English fail, where all our art fails. Striking
ideas we have, and well-executed details we have; but that high symmetry
which, with satisfying and delightful effect, combines them, we seldom
or never have. The glorious beauty of the Acropolis at Athens did not
come from single fine things stuck about on that hill, a statue here, a
gateway there;--no, it arose from all things being perfectly combined
for a supreme total effect. What must not an Englishman feel about our
deficiencies in this respect, as the sense for beauty, whereof this
symmetry is an essential element, awakens and strengthens within him!
what will not one day be his respect and desire for Greece and its
_symmetria prisca_, when the scales drop from his eyes as he walks the
London streets, and he sees such a lesson in meanness as the Strand, for
instance, in its true deformity! But here we are coming to our friend
Mr. Ruskin's province, and I will not intrude upon it, for he is its
very sufficient guardian.

And so we at last find, it seems, we find flowing in favor of the
humanities the natural and necessary stream of things, which seemed
against them when we started. The "hairy quadruped furnished with a tail
and pointed ears, probably arboreal in his habits," this good fellow
carried hidden in his nature, apparently, something destined to develop
into a necessity for humane letters. Nay, more: we seem finally to be
even led to the further c