THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.

267

Poetry cultivates the imagination, and fills the soul with pure, bright pictures. Homer, Dante, Shakespeare! How they outweigh kings and warriors and millionaires. Poetry is power, truth, beauty, pathos, exaltation. The utility of the ideal! How the glowing theme expands as we try to compass it.

In a lecture given recently at Oxford, on mediaeval universities, Gladstone said he feared that under pressure from without they should lean, if ever so little, to that theory of education which “ would have it construct machines of so many horse-power, rather than form characters, and rear into true excellence that marvelous creature we call man, which gloats upon success in life, instead of studying to secure that the man shall always be greater than his work, and never bounded by it; but that his eye shall boldly run, in the words of Wordsworth,

“ Along the line of limitless desires.”

Mr. Emerson replied to his daughter, who inquired whether she should study botany, Greek, or metaphysics, that it was of no consequence what she studied; the question was with whom she studied.

We recall Garfield’s tribute: “A university education might have been received while sitting on the same log with Mark Hopkins.”

Unconscious tuition! The old theme, you say. Yes, old as humanity; and yet our chief source of inspiration. Let us dwell upon it until we are filled with a sense of its real grandeur.

Foreign nations acknowledge the greatness of our land, but they deny our claim to superiority in literary productions. They tell us that American writers are not original; that America lacks historical associations, and that we are too hurried, too practical a people to excel in literature. Is this true? America has had less than three centuries of existence, and much of that time has been spent in clearing forests and subduing enemies. Has she not already given the world a greater number of worthy authors than any other nation in the same period of its early existence? Bry­ant and Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell, Holmes, Hawthorne, Bancroft, Cooper, Mrs. Stowe, and Emerson—who can say that coming generations will not award to these first rank ?

But, grant that we have not yet produced one truly great writer, the future is radiant with promise. When centuries have passed and time has lent enchantment, the romantic and thrilling incidents connected with the discovery and colonization of our country will furnish themes as grand as any ever presented to epic poet. What historic associations more sacred, more inspiring, than those that cluster about Plym­outh Rock, Bunker Hill, Valley Forge, Yorktown and Gettysburg?

The nations of the earth are coming to our shores and mingling with our people. Into the blood of coming generations will be infused the best elements of every race, giving rise to a new nation superior in intellectual vigor to any that has existed. We believe that the poet of the future will be an American. What may we not expect from woman in this land of her emancipation? Now that her opportunities and priv­ileges are enlarging, may she not give to us golden thoughts in enduring form that will be a worthy expression of the highest civilization? What a heritage of patriotic literature in song and story will this year bequeath to the youth of America! What is this wondrous exhibition but the volume of the nineteenth century, opened on American soil that the world may read its radiant chapters? Upon its gilded pages are science and art, prose and poetry.

Here is indelibly inscribed an immortal tribute to woman’s worth and power, and here, engraved in letters of light, is the characteristic of the coming heroes and hero­ines: “ Whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all.”