misc writings and speeches(米斯克说与写)-第54章
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mental world; all the hoarded treasures of its primeval dynasties; all the
shapeless ore of its yet unexplored mines。 This is the gift of Athens to
man。 Her freedom and her power have for more than twenty centuries
been annihilated; her people have degenerated into timid slaves; her
language into a barbarous jargon; her temples have been given up to the
successive depredations of Romans; Turks; and Scotchmen; but her
intellectual empire is imperishable。 And when those who have rivalled
her greatness shall have shared her fate; when civilisation and knowledge
shall have fixed their abode in distant continents; when the sceptre shall
have passed away from England; when; perhaps; travellers from distant
regions shall in vain labour to decipher on some mouldering pedestal the
name of our proudest chief; shall hear savage hymns chaunted to some
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THE MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS AND SPEECHES OF LORD MACAULAY
misshapen idol over the ruined dome of our proudest temple; and shall see
a single naked fisherman wash his nets in the river of the ten thousand
masts;her influence and her glory will still survive;fresh in eternal
youth; exempt from mutability and decay; immortal as the intellectual
principle from which they derived their origin; and over which they
exercise their control。
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