You will not mistake
Mont Blanc, if you see
him, but until you get accustomed to the panorama, you may easily mistake one
of his court for the king.” It stands there a piece of mute brass, that
seems nevertheless to know in what vicinity it is: and there perchance it
will stand, when the nation that placed it there has passed away, still in
sympathy with the mountains, forever discriminating in the desert.
So, we may say, stands this man, pointing as long as he lives, in obedience
to some spiritual magnetism, to the summits in the historical horizon, for
the guidance of his fellows.
Truly, our greatest blessings are very cheap. To have our sunlight without
paying for it, without any duty levied — to have our poet there in
England, to furnish us entertainment, and, what is better, provocation, from
year to year, all our lives long, to make the world seem richer for us, the
age more respectable, and life better worth the living — all without
expense of acknowledgment even, but silently accepted out of the east, like
morning light, as a matter of course.
