When  the  traveler  pauses  on  the  plains  of  Marathon,
what  are  the  emotions  which  strongly  agitate  his
breast  ?  what  is  that  glorious  recollection  that  thrills
through  his  frame,  and  suffuses  his  eyes  ?      Not,  I
imagine,  that  Grecian  skill  and  Grecian  valor  were
here  most  signally  displayed,  but  that  Greece  herself
was  saved.     It  is  because  to  this  spot,  and  to  the
event  which  has  rendered  it  immortal,  he  refers  all
the  succeeding  glories  of  the  republic.     It  is  because,
if  that  day  had  gone  otherwise,  Greece  had  perished.
It  is  because  he  perceives  that  her  philosophers  and
orators,  her  poets  and  painters,  her  sculptors  and


NUMBER  TWENTY-THREE  163

architects,  her  government  and  free  institutions
point  backward  to  Marathon,  and  that  their  future
existence  seems  to  have  been  suspended  on  the  con-
tingency  whether  the  Persian  or  Grecian  banner
should  wave  victorious  in  the  beams  of  that  day's
setting  sun.  And  as  his  imagination  kindles  at  the
retrospect,  he  is  transported  back  to  the  interesting
moment;  he  counts  the  fearful  odds  of  the  contend-
ing hosts;  his  interest  for  the  result  overwhelms
him ;  he  trembles  as  if  it  were  still  uncertain,  and
seems  to  doubt  whether  he  may  consider  Socrates
and  Plato,  Demosthenes,  Sophocles,  and  Phidias  as
secure  yet  to  himself  and  to  the  world.
Daniel  Webster.
THE  BELLS  OF  BROOKLINE.
Permission  of  the  author.
