A Lecture on Idiocy (Classic Reprint)

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Excerpt from A Lecture on Idiocy

Rome is yet a city of palaces and temples, and of ruins still more glorious and divine than they. Such is the commencement of one of Shelley's prose para graphs - a style of writing in prose, as elegant and eloquent, as his poetry is refined and exquisite. After speaking of the sublime ruins of Rome in other as pects, he proceeds to allude to their moral bearing. And he concludes, that these gigantic relics, though only calling to mind sad recollections of gladiatorial shows, of reckless power, and barbarous rites, still are grand and glorious, when the reﬂection is hence evolved as to the capabilities of man in working out mighty results - and the 'hope of future noble efforts in a better direction is thus educed from works, which in themselves are only the dreary tokens of man's errors. There is truly something in the general aspect of Rome, which at once reveals to the traveler from our new country, evidence of the vast power dis played by the human race in erecting structures which time itself has not prevailed against; and at the same moment the entire absence of the better feelings of.

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