The House of The Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne Chapter 12 Page 18

their dead corpses buried, and everything to begin anew.

As to the main point, — may we never live to doubt it! — as to the better centuries that are coming, the artist was surely right.

His error lay in supposing that this age, more than any past or future one, is destined to see the tattered garments of Antiquity exchanged for a new suit, instead of gradually renewing themselves by patchwork; in applying his own little life-span as the measure of an interminable achievement; and, more than all, in fancying that it mattered anything to the great end in view whether he himself should contend for it or against it. Yet it was well for him to think so. This enthusiasm, infusing itself through the calmness of his character, and thus taking an aspect of settled thought and wisdom,