look as if our estimate of the Great
Man, epoch after epoch, were continually diminishing? We take him
first for a god, then for one god-inspired; and now in the next stage
of it, his most miraculous word gains from us only the recognition
that he is a Poet, beautiful verse-maker, man of genius, or
such-like!--It looks so; but I persuade myself that intrinsically it
is not so. If we consider well, it will perhaps appear that in man
still there is the _same_ altogether peculiar admiration for the
Heroic Gift, by what name soever called, that there at any time was.

I should say, if we do not now reckon a Great Man literally divine, it
is that our notions of God, of the supreme unattainable Fountain of
Splendour, Wisdom and Heroism, are ever rising _higher_; not
altogether that our reverence for these qualities, as manifested in
our like, is getting lower. This is worth taking thought of. Sceptical
Dilettantism, the curse of these ages, a curse which will not last for
ever, does indeed in this the highest province of human things, as in
all provinces, make sad work; and our reverence for great men, all
crippled, blinded, paralytic as it is, comes out in poor plight,
hardly recognizable. Men worship the shows of great men; the most
disbelieve that there is any reality of great men to worship. The
dreariest, fatallest faith; believing which, one would literally
despair of human things. Nevertheless look, for example, at Napoleon!
A Corsican lieutenant of artillery; that is the show of _him_: yet is
he not obeyed, _worshipped_ after his sort, as all the Tiaraed and
Diademed of the world put together could not be? High Duchesses, and
ostlers of inns, gather round the Scottish rustic, Burns;--a strange
feeling dwelling in each that they never heard a man like this; that,
on the whole, this is the man! In the secret heart of these people it
still dimly reveals itself, though there is no accredited way of
uttering it at present, that this rustic, with his black brows and
flashing sun-eyes, and strange words moving laughter and tears, is of
a dignity far beyond all others, incommensurable with all others. Do
not we feel it so? But now, were Dilettantism, Scepticism, Triviality,
and all that sorrowful brood, cast-out of us,--as, by God's blessing,
they shall one day be; were faith in the shows of things entirely
swept out, replaced by clear faith in the _things_, so that a man
acted on the impulse of that only, and counted the ot