ns. But, since history ever
repeats itself, the maxims that guided the policy of Rome in her advance
to sovereignty are not without application here. Her mistakes may be
monitions to us.

A great, a homogeneous, and yet an active people, having strength and
security in its political institutions, may look forward to a career of
glory. It may, without offense, seek to render its life memorable in the
annals of the human race.

* * * * *

=_James Russell Lowell, 1810-._= (Manual, pp. 503, 520.)

From "Among my Books."

=_217._= NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO.

I have little sympathy with declaimers about the Pilgrim Fathers, who
look upon them all as men of grand conceptions and superhuman foresight.
An entire ship's company of Columbuses is what the world never saw. It
is not wise to form any theory and fit our facts to it, as a man in a
hurry is apt to cram his traveling-bag, with a total disregard of shape
or texture. But perhaps it may be found that the facts will only fit
comfortably together on a single plan, namely, that the fathers did have
a conception (which those will call grand who regard simplicity as a
necessary element of grandeur) of founding here a commonwealth on
those two eternal bases of Faith and Work; that they had, indeed, no
revolutionary ideas of universal liberty; but yet, what answered the
purpose quite as well, an abiding faith in the brotherhood of man and
the fatherhood of God; and that they did not so much propose to make all
things new, as to develop the latent possibilities of English law and
English character by clearing away the fences by which the abuse of
the one was gradually discommoning the other from the broad fields of
natural right. They were not in advance of their age, as it is called,
for no one who is so can ever work profitably in it; but they were alive
to the highest and most earnest thinking of their time.

* * * * *

=_218._= From an "Essay on Dryden."

I do not think he added a single word to the language, unless, as
I suspect, he first used magnetism in its present sense of moral
attraction. What he did in his best writing was, to use the English as
if it were a spoken, and not merely an inkhorn language; as if it were
his own to do what he pleased with it, as if it need not be ashamed of
itself. In this respect, his service to our prose was greater than
any other man has ever rendered. He says h