Walden

knew, but in the select language of literature. They had not learned
the nobler dialects of Greece and Rome, but the very materials on which
they were written were waste paper to them, and they prized instead a
cheap contemporary literature. But when the several nations of Europe
had acquired distinct though rude written languages of their own,
sufficient for the purposes of their rising literatures, then first
learning revived, and scholars were enabled to discern from that
remoteness the treasures of antiquity. What the Roman and Grecian
multitude could not _hear_, after the lapse of ages a few scholars
_read_, and a few scholars only are still reading it.

However much we may admire the orator’s occasional bursts of eloquence,
the noblest written words are commonly as far behind or above the
fleeting spoken language as the firmament with its stars is behind the
clouds. _There_ are the stars, and they who can may read them. The
astronomers forever comment on and observe them. They are not
exhalations like our daily colloquies and vaporous breath. What is
called eloquence in the forum is commonly found to be rhetoric in the
study. The orator yields to the inspiration of a transient occasion,