operation by expecting noble service where the memory of nobility
abides. When last year Oxford bestowed its highest honor on an American,
distinguished not only for his own public acts but for the great tradition
embodied in his name, the Orator of the University did not omit this
legitimate appeal to the imagination, singularly appropriate in its
academic Latin:

... Statim succurrit animo antiqua illa Romae condicio, cum non
tam propter singulos cives quam propter singulas gentes nomen
Romanum floreret. Cum enim civis alicujus et avum et proavum
principes civitatis esse creatos, cum patrem legationis munus apud
aulam Britannicam summa cum laude esse exsecutum cognovimus; cum
denique ipsum per totum bellum stipendia equo meritum, summa
pericula "Pulcra pro Libertate" ausum,... Romanae alicujus
gentis--Brutorum vel Deciorum--annales evolvere videmur, qui
testimonium adhibent "fortes creari fortibus," et majorum exemplis
et imaginibus nepotes ad virtutem accendi.

Is there any man so dull of soul as not to be stirred by that enumeration
of civic services zealously inherited; or is there any one so envious of
the past as not to believe that such memories should be honored in the
present as an incentive to noble emulation?

Well, we cannot all of us count Presidents and Ambassadors among our
ancestors, but we can, if we will, in the genealogy of the inner life
enroll ourselves among the adopted sons of a family in comparison with
which the Bruti and Decii of old and the Adamses of to-day are veritable
_new men_. We can see what defence against the meaner depredations of the
world may be drawn from the pride of birth, when, as it sometimes happens,
the obligation of a great past is kept as a contract with the present;
shall we forget to measure the enlargement and elevation of mind which
ought to come to a man who has made himself the heir of the ancient Lords
of Wisdom? "To one small people," as Sir Henry Maine has said, in words
often quoted, "it was given to create the principle of Progress. That
people was the Greek. Except the blind forces of Nature, nothing moves in
this world which is not Greek in its origin." That is a hard saying, but
scarcely exaggerated. Examine the records of our art and our science, our
philosophy and the enduring element of our faith, our statecraft and our
notion of liberty, and you will find that they all go back for their
inspiration to that one sm