cation
was in Greek hands. The Greek master spoke Latin to his boys;
no doubt with a Greek accent. So cultured speech, cultured
Latin, came to mean Latin without its syllabic stresses; spoken,
as nearly as might be, with Greek evenness and quantity.--As if
French should so submerge us, that we spoke our United States
dapping out syllable by syllable like Frenchmen. But it is a
fearful thing for a nation to forgo the rhythm evolved under the
stress of its own Soul,--especially when what it takes on instead
is the degenerate leavings of another: Alexandria, not Athens.
This Rome did. She gained the world, and lost her own soul; and
the exchange profited her as little as you might expect.

Imitation of culture is often the last touch that makes the
parvenu unbearable; it was so in Rome. One likes better in some
ways Cato's stult old Roman attitude: who scorned Greek all his
life for sheer foppery, while he knew of nothing better written
in it than such trash as poetry and philosophy; but at eighty
came on a Greek treatise on manure and straightway learned the
language that he might read and enjoy something profitable and
thoroughly Roman in spirit.--Greek artists flocked to Rome; and
doubtless the more fifth-rate they were the better a thing they
made of it: but it was risky for good men to rely on Roman
appreciations. Two flute-players are contending at a concert;
Greek and perhaps rather good. Their music is soon drowned in
catcalls: What the dickens do we Romans want with such _footling
tootlings?_ Then the presiding magistrate has an idea. He calls
on them to quit that fooler and get down to business:--Give us
our money's worth, condemn you to it, ye naughty knaves:
_fight!_--And fight they must, poor things, while the audience,
that but now was bored to death, howls with rapture.

So Rome passed away. Where now is the simple soul who, while
his feet were on his native soil and he asked nothing better
than to hoe his cabbages and turn out yearly for patriotic
throat-cuttings, was reputable--nay, respect-worthy,--and above
all, not a little picturesque? Alas! he is no more.--You remember
Kelly,--lovable Kelly, who in his youth, trotting the swate ould
bogs of Cohhacht, heard poetry in every sigh of the wind,--saw
the hosts of the Danaan Sidhe riding their flamey steeds
through the twilight,--listened, by the cabin peat-fire in
the evenings, to tales of Finn MacCool and Cuculain and the
ancient heroes