No child's play was it for
those of another and still rude civilization to meet them in their
fastnesses, and the end of the struggle--for this region at least--was,
not a conquest, but a blending, a blending good for each of the two
forces.
And as the face of Nature changed with the ages, as the later glacial
cold wavered and fluctuated and forced back and forth migrations of man
and beast, still the first-formed group retained coherence, retained it
beyond great natural cataclysms, retained it to historic ages, to wield
long the smoothed stone weapons, and, afterward, the bronze axes, and to
diverge in many branches of contentious defenders and invaders, to become
Iberian and Gaul and Celt and Saxon, to fight family against family, and
to commingle again in these later times.
Upon the beach the other day, watching the waves lap toward her, sat a
woman, cultured, very beautiful and wise in woman's way and among the
fairest and the best of all earth can produce. There are many such as
she. Barely longer ago than the other day, as time is counted, a rugged
man, gentle as resolute and noble, became the enshrined hero of a vast
republic, when he struck from slave limbs the shackles of four million
people. In an insular home across the sea, interested still in the
world's affairs, is an old man vigorous in his octogenarianism, a power,
though out of power, a figure to be a monument in personal history, a
great man.
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