. My brow have they crowned with their goodness, and on
my life have their paths dropped fatness. Dreaming under their vines and
fig-trees, I have gathered in my lap and garnered in my heart their
mellow fruits.

"With them I take delight in weal
And seek relief in woe,
And while I understand and feel
How much to them I owe,
My cheeks have often been bedewed
With tears of heartfelt gratitude."

But, though with gladness and joy I render unto Caesar the things that
are Caesar's, he shall not have that which does not belong to him.
Neither Benlomond, nor any living man, nor any one man, living or dead,
has any claim to my fealty, be it worth much or little. If I cannot go
in to the banquet on Olympus by the bidding of the master of the feast,
I will forswear ambrosia altogether, and to the end of my days feed on
millet with the peasants in the Vale of Tempe.

Then you sail on another tack, smile and shake your head and say, "It is
all very well, but it has not the element of immortality. Observe the
difference between this writer and Charles Lamb. One is ginger-pop beer
that foams and froths and is gone, while the other is the sound Madeira
that will be better fifty years hence than now."

Well, what of it? Do you mean to say, that, because a man has no
argosies sailing in from, the isles of Eden, freighted with the juices
of the tropics, he shall not brew hops in his own cellar? Because you
will have none but the vintages of dead centuries, shall not the people
delight their hearts with new wine? Because you are an epicure, shall
there be no more cakes and ale? Go to! It is a happy fate to be a poet's
Falernian, old and mellow, sealed in _amphorae_, to be crowned with
linden-garlands and the late rose. But for all earth's acres there are
few Sabine farms, whither poet, sage, and statesman come to lose in the
murmur of Bandusian founts the din of faction and of strife; and even
there it is not always Caecuban or Calenian, neither Formian nor
Falernian, but the _vile Sabinum_ in common cups and wreathed with
simple myrtle, that bubbles up its welcome. So, since there must be
lighter draughts, or many a poor man go thirsty, we who are but the
ginger-pop of life may well rejoice, remembering that ginger-pop is
nourishing and tonic,--that thousands of weary wayfarers who could never
know the taste of the costly brands, and who go sadly and wearily, will
be fleeter of foot and gladder of soul