This profound ignorance, this deep sleep of the higher
faculties of man, coexists with a great abundance of what are called
the means of learning, great activity of book-making, and of formal
teaching. Go into one of our public libraries, when a new box of
books and journals has arrived with the usual importation of the
periodical literature of England. The best names of Britain are on
the covers. What a mass of literary production for a single week or
month! We speculate upon it before we read. We say, what an
invention is the press and the journal, by which a hundred pale
students, each a hive of distilled flowers of learning, of thought,
-- each a poet, -- each an accomplished man whom the selectest
influences have joined to breed and enrich, are made to unite their
manifold streams for the information and delight of everybody who can
read! How lame is speech, how imperfect the communication of the
ancient Harper, wandering from castle to hamlet, to sing to a vagrant
audience his melodious thoughts! These unopened books contain the
chosen verses of a hundred minstrels, born, living, and singing in
distant countries and different languages; for, the intellectual
wealth of the world, like its commercial, rolls to London, and
through that great heart is hurled again to the extremities.
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