Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 7.pdf/272

266, John Milton was overlooked and forgotten. Though the literary defender of the commonwealth and regicides, he was regarded as too unimportant for notice. His obscurity secured him immunity from prosecution, and he died unnoticed. But so great is he now that Kings and Princes and nobles of his time walk about under his shadow; the very age that neglected him is now known as "The Age of Milton," and receives its luster from his name. Mind and spirit are the controlling forces of the world. Men of preëminence can be estimated only by their peers. Equality of judgment is too scantily bestowed in any living generation to insure a correct decision, to settle the scale of pretension, to arrange the gradations of favor, or the definitive place or title which each is to occupy in the ranks of fame. Contemporary men often pronounce that to be greatest which approaches nearest to themselves, since they are able to look upon it with the distinctness of close proximity. But the judgment is with the future time. We get no proper sense of the majesty of our mountain peaks when near them. We must draw back a little if we would take in their full grandeur.

On this view the work of our missionaries in Oregon rises to proportions more and more majestic, as we study it from the standpoint of history and of consequences; and though others bore lofty spirits and did great work, no name stands or will stand above that of Jason Lee.

In 1835 Nathaniel J. Wyeth had been defeated in his enterprise to establish trade and a settlement of white men in the valley of the Columbia River by the