Model Speeches for Practise | Page 7

fertility of
invention, and this year as much as in any year that I can remember,
exhibits in the department of landscape, that fundamental condition of
all excellence, intimate and profound sympathy with nature.
As regards literature one who is now beginning at any rate to descend
the hill of life naturally looks backward as well as forward, and we
must be becoming conscious that the early part of this century has
witnessed in this and other countries what will be remembered in future
times as a splendid literary age. The elder among us have lived in the
lifetime of many great men who have passed to their rest--the younger
have heard them familiarly spoken of and still have their works in their
hands as I trust they will continue to be in the hands of all generations.
I am afraid we can not hope for literature--it would be contrary to all
the experience of former times were we to hope that it should be
equally sustained at that extraordinarily high level which belongs,
speaking roughly, to the first fifty years after the peace of 1815. That
was a great period--a great period in England, a great period in
Germany, a great period in France, and a great period, too, in Italy.
As I have said, I think we can hardly hope that it should continue on a
perfect level at so high an elevation. Undoubtedly the cultivation of
literature will ever be dear to the people of this country; but we must
remember what is literature and what is not. In the first place we should
be all agreed that bookmaking is not literature. The business of

bookmaking I have no doubt may thrive and will be continued upon a
constantly extending scale from year to year. But that we may put aside.
For my own part if I am to look a little forward, what I anticipate for
the remainder of the century is an age not so much of literature
proper--not so much of great, permanent and splendid additions to
those works in which beauty is embodied as an essential condition of
production, but rather look forward to an age of research. This is an age
of great research--of great research in science, great research in
history--an age of research in all the branches of inquiry that throw
light upon the former condition whether of our race, or of the world
which it inhabits; and it may be hoped that, even if the remaining years
of the century be not so brilliant as some of its former periods, in the
production of works great in themselves, and immortal,--still they may
add largely to the knowledge of mankind; and if they make such
additions to the knowledge of mankind, they will be preparing the
materials of a new tone and of new splendors in the realm of literature.
There is a sunrise and sunset. There is a transition from the light of the
sun to the gentler light of the moon. There is a rest in nature which
seems necessary in all her great operations. And so with all the great
operations of the human mind. But do not let us despond if we seem to
see a diminished efficacy in the production of what is essentially and
immortally great. Our sun is hidden only for a moment. It is like the
day-star of Milton:--
"Which anon repairs his drooping head, And tricks his beams, and with
new spangled ore, Flames in the forehead of the morning sky."
I rejoice in an occasion like this which draws the attention of the world
to topics which illustrate the union of art with literature and of literature
with science, because you have a hard race to run, you have a severe
competition against the attraction of external pursuits, whether those
pursuits take the form of business or pleasure. It is given to you to
teach lessons of the utmost importance to mankind, in maintaining the
principle that no progress can be real which is not equable, which is not
proportionate, which does not develop all the faculties belonging to our
nature. If a great increase of wealth in a country takes place, and with
that increase of wealth a powerful stimulus to the invention of mere

luxury, that, if it stands alone, is not, never can be, progress. It is only
that one-sided development which is but one side of deformity. I hope
we shall have no one-sided development. One mode of avoiding it is to
teach the doctrine of that sisterhood you have asserted to-day, and
confident I am that the good wishes you have exprest on behalf of
literature will be re-echoed in behalf of art wherever men of letters are
found.

ADDRESS OF WELCOME[1]
BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES