Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/254

250 born with wrinkles, and dreadfully like his grandmother, only looking older and more effete. Our muse does not come down from an American Parnassus, with a new heaven in her eye, men not daring to look on the face of anointed beauty, coming to tell of noble thought, to kindle godlike feelings with her celestial spark, and stir mankind to noble deeds. She finds Parnassus steep and high, and hard to climb; the air austere and cold, the light severe, too stern for her effeminate nerves. So she has a little dwelling in the flat and close-pent town, hard by the public street; breathes its Bœotian breath; walks with the money-lenders at high change; has her account, at the bank, her pew in the most fashionable church and least austere; she gets approving nods in the street, flattery in the penny prints, sweetmeats and striding wine in the proper places. What were the inspirations of all God's truth to her? He "taunts the lofty land with little men."

There still remains the exceptional literature; some of it is only fugitive, some meant for permanent duration. Here is a new and different spirit; a respect for human nature above human history, for man above all the accidents of man, for God above all the alleged accidents of God; a veneration for the eternal laws which He only makes and man but finds; a law before all statutes, above all constitutions, and holier than all the writings of human hands. Here you find most fully the sentiments and ideas of America, not such as rule the nation now, but which, unconsciously to the people, have caused the noble deeds of our history, and now prophesy a splendid future for this young giant here. These sentiments and ideas are brought to consciousness in this literature. Here a precedent is not a limitation; a fact of history does not eclipse an idea of nature; an investment is not thought more sacred than a right. Here is more hope than memory; little deference to wealth and rank, but a constant aspiration for truth, justice, love, and piety; little fear of the public opinion of the many or the few, rather a scorn thereof, almost a defiance of it. It appears in books, in pamphlets, in journals, and in sermons, sorely scant in quantity as yet. New and fresh, it is often greatly deficient in form; rough, rude, and uncouth, it yet has in it a soul