"WHEN THE SLEEPER WAKES" 391



aristocracy, so there was no other part of the island where
such men had in such a degree the better qualities of an
aristocracy, grace and dignity of manner, self-respect, and
that noble sensibility which makes dishonor more terrible
than death. A gentleman of Skye or Lochaber, whose
clothes were begrimed with the accumulated filth of years,
and whose hovel smelt worse than an English hogstye,
would often do the honors of that hovel with a lofty cour-
tesy worthy of the splendid circle of Versailles. Though
he had as little book-learning as the most stupid plough-
boys of England, it would have been a great error to put
him in the same intellectual rank with such ploughboys.
It is indeed only by reading that men can become pro-
foundly acquainted with any science.   But the arts of
poetry and rhetoric may be carried near to absolute per-
fection, and may exercise a mighty influence on the public
mind, in an age in which books are wholly or almost wholly
unknown."

  So, too, in the rudest communities of Appa-
lachia, among the most trifling and unmoral
natives of this region, among the illiterate and
hide-bound, there still is much to excite admira-
tion and good hope. I have not shrunk from
telling the truth about these people, even when
it was far from pleasant; but I would have pre-
served strict silence had I not seen in the most
backward of them certain sterling qualities of
manliness that our nation can ill afford to waste.
It is a truth as old as the human race that sav-