--_Webster_.
3. In some far-away and yet undreamt-of hour, I can even imagine that
England may cast all thoughts of possessive wealth back to the barbaric
nations among whom they first arose; and that, while the sands of the
Indus and adamant of Golconda may yet stiffen the housings of the
charger and flash from the turban of the slave, she, as a Christian
mother, may at last attain to the virtues and the treasures of a Heathen
one, and be able to lead forth her Sons, saying, "These are my
Jewels."--_Ruskin_.
4. And, when those who have rivaled her [Athens's] greatness shall have
shared her fate; when civilization and knowledge shall have fixed their
abode in distant continents; when the scepter shall have passed away
from England; when, perhaps, travelers from distant regions shall in
vain labor to decipher on some moldering pedestal the name of our
proudest chief, shall hear savage hymns chanted to some misshapen idol
over the ruined dome of our proudest temple, and shall see a single
naked fisherman wash his nets in the river of the ten thousand
masts,--her influence and her glory will still survive, fresh in eternal
youth, exempt from mutability and decay, immortal as the intellectual
principle from which they derived their origin, and over which they
exercise their control.
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