informed with a spirit which led her own spell-bound. Grammar,--Grammar,
which had been a synonyme for all that was dry, irksome, useless,--a
beating of the wind, the crackling of thorns under a pot,--Grammar even
assumed for her a charm, a wonder, a glory. She saw how the great and
wise had shrined in fitting words their purity, and wisdom, and sorrow,
and suffering, and penitence; and how, as this generation passed away,
and another came forth which knew not God, the golden casket became dim,
and the memory of its priceless gem faded away; but how, at the touch of
a mighty wand, the obedient lid flew back, and the long-hidden thought
"sprang full-statured in an hour." She saw how love and beauty and
freedom lay floating vaguely and aimlessly in a million minds till the
poet came and crystallized them into clear-cut, prismatic words, tinged
for each with the color of his own fancy, and wrought into a perfect
mosaic, not for an age, but for all time. Led by a strong hand, she trod
with reverent awe down the dim aisles of the Past, and saw how the soul
of man, bound in its prison-house, had ever struggled to voice itself
in words. Roaming in the dense forest with the stern and bloody
Druid,--bounding over the waves with the fierce pirates who supplanted
them, and in whose blue eyes and beneath whose fair locks gleamed indeed
the ferocity of the savage, but lurked also, though unseen and unknown,
the tender chivalry of the English gentleman,--gazing admiringly on the
barbaric splendor of the cloth-of-gold, whereon trod regally, to the
sound of harp and viol, the beauty and bravery of the old Norman
nobility, she delighted to see how the mother-tongue, our dear
mother-tongue, had laid all the nations under contribution to enrich
her treasury,--gathering from one its strength, from another its
stateliness, from a third its harmony, till the harsh, crude, rugged
dialect of a barbarous horde became worthy to embody, as it does, the
love, the wisdom, and the faith of half a world.