All
this phantasmagoria of memory is accompanied by the echo of a melodious,
rich voice, rising and falling, in the to me unfamiliar but delightful
accent of an educated Englishman: and the story of Ancient
Greece--sometimes her poetry with the loves of her gods, the fights, the
shouts of battle, the exhortations and the groans of her heroes--rises
once more before me. Or, again, I hear the tale told anew of that great
last immortal day in the life of Socrates, as the great Philosopher sank
to rest in a glory of self-sacrificing submission, serenity, and
courage--a story which moves the world to tears and admiration, and will
continue so to do as long as it endures. The voice of the teacher and
the friend still survives, which had this extraordinary power of giving
in the very different tongue of England all the glories of the poetry
and the prose of Greece; and other youths, doubtless like me, look out
under the spell of its music to that same green garden in far-off
Galway, by the side of Corrib's stream.
[Sidenote: Gladstone dreams.]
Of all this I sate musing during some idle moments in the middle of
March; for, as I looked at Mr.
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