[124] and the way in which all who represent the second class in leadership fall into oblivion. Thus it is in public affairs. In the great liberal movement in England men remember only Cobden and Bright, and in the American anti-slavery movement, Garrison and Phillips, and forget all of that large class whom we may call the non-commissioned officers, whose self-devotion was quite as great. It is yet more strikingly true in literature. Walter Savage Landor states it as his aspiration to have a seat, however humble, upon the small bench that holds the really original authors of the world. It is a large demand on fate. The name of E. P. Whipple, for instance, or of Dr. J. G. Holland, or of R. H. Dana, scarcely appeals even to the memory of most young students, and yet these men were at the time potent on the lecture platform and in editorial chairs. We can already see the same shadow of oblivion overtaking the brilliant George William Curtis, and even a name so recent as that of Charles Dudley Warner.
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[124] and the way in which all who represent the second class in leadership fall into oblivion. Thus it is in public affairs. In the great liberal movement in England men remember only Cobden and Bright, and in the American anti-slavery movement, Garrison and Phillips, and forget all of that large class whom we may call the non-commissioned officers, whose self-devotion was quite as great. It is yet more strikingly true in literature. Walter Savage Landor states it as his aspiration to have a seat, however humble, upon the small bench that holds the really original authors of the world. It is a large demand on fate. The name of E. P. Whipple, for instance, or of Dr. J. G. Holland, or of R. H. Dana, scarcely appeals even to the memory of most young students, and yet these men were at the time potent on the lecture platform and in editorial chairs. We can already see the same shadow of oblivion overtaking the brilliant George William Curtis, and even a name so recent as that of Charles Dudley Warner.
Boston, New York and Chicago. Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1903.
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