From the moment of entering a library and
opening a desired book, we cease to be citizens, creditors, debtors,
housekeepers, and men of care and fear. What boundless leisure! what
original jurisdiction! the old constellations have set, new and
brighter have arisen; an elysian light tinges all objects.
"In the afternoon we came unto a land
In which it seemed always afternoon."
And this sweet asylum of an intellectual life must appear to
have the sanction of nature, as long as so many men are born with so
decided an aptitude for reading and writing. Let us thankfully allow
every faculty and art which opens new scope to a life so confined as
ours. There are vast spaces in a thought; a slave, to whom the
religious sentiment is opened, has a freedom which makes his master's
freedom a slavery. Let us not be so illiberal with our schemes for
the renovation of society and nature, as to disesteem or deny the
literary spirit. Certainly there are heights in nature which command
this; there are many more which this commands. It is vain to call it
a luxury, and as saints and reformers are apt to do, decry it as a
species of day-dreaming.
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