Page:Free Opinions, Freely Expressed on Certain Phases of Modern Social Life and Conduct.djvu/310

 walked on the shores of Britain, or that Nero fiddled while Rome was burning. In fact we should still be in the dark ages, without so much as a dream of the magnificent era of progress through which we have come, and in which we, of this present generation, have our glorious share. And so I think and venture to say that the power of the Pen is one which commands more millions of human beings than any monarch's rule, and that the profession of the pen, called Literature, is the greatest, the highest, and the noblest that is open to aspiring ambition. Empires, thrones, commerce, war, politics, society—these things last but their brief hour—the Power of the Pen takes note of them as they pass—but outlives them all!

We should know nothing to-day of the grandeurs of old Egypt, or the histories of her forgotten kings, if it were not for the Rosetta stone—on which the engraver's instrument, serving as a pen, wrote the Egyptian hieroglyphics beside the Greek characters, thus giving us the clue to the buried secrets of a long past great civilization. The classic land of Greece, once foremost in all things which make nations great, particularly in the valour and victorious deeds of her military heroes, has almost forgotten her ancient glory—she might perhaps be forgotten by other nations altogether in the constant springing up of new countries and peoples if it were not for Homer! The blind, despised old man, who sang her golden days of pride and conquest, still keeps her memory green. And let us not forget that other glorious poet, who laid his laurel-wreath and life upon her shrine—our own immortal Byron—whose splendid lyric,