confer immortality on what is ignoble. The fiction
that is devoted to obscene realism, whatever may be the prestige of its
authors or its current vogue, is surely doomed. Only that which is
morally good is destined to live through the ages. The genial Dickens
will always be more popular than the satirical Thackeray. Boswell's
"Life of Johnson" owes its principal charm not to any trick of style,
but to the honest, rugged piece of manhood it brings before us. Only a
man of Luther's heroic spirit could have inspired this magnificent
tribute in Carlyle's "Heroes and Hero-Worship": "I will call this Luther
a true great man; great in intellect, in courage, affection, and
integrity; one of our most lovable and precious men. Great, not as a
hewn obelisk, but as an Alpine mountain,--so simple, honest,
spontaneous, not setting up to be great at all; there for quite another
purpose than being great! Ah yes, unsubduable granite, piercing far and
wide into the heavens; yet in the clefts of it fountains, green,
beautiful valleys with flowers! A right spiritual hero and prophet; once
more, a true son of nature and fact, for whom these centuries, and many
that are to come yet, will be thankful to Heaven."

Heroic self-sacrifice strongly appeals to us. Whenever a man or woman
gives up self for the good of others, we intuitively admire and honor
the deed. The story of Thermopylae, the leap of Curtius into the yawning
chasm, the charge of the Light Brigade,--

"... though the soldier knew
Some one had blundered,"--

are instances of heroic self-sacrifice which the world is unwilling to
forget. There is a charm in Tennyson's "Godiva" or his "Enoch Arden"
beyond the reach of mere art; it is found in the noble spirit of the
heroine who replies to the taunt of her husband,--

"But I would die";

and in the deep self-renunciation of the hero who, in heartbreaking
anguish, prayed,--

"Help me not to break in upon her peace."

The beauty of a life of simplicity and benevolence is seen in the
immortal Vicar of Wakefield. His unaffected goodness has made him dear
to successive generations. In like manner we pay a spontaneous tribute
to Chaucer's "poure parson of a toune," and to the preacher of the
"Deserted Village":

"A man he was to all the country dear,
And passing rich with forty pounds a year;
Remote from towns he ran his godly race,
Nor e'er had changed, nor wished to change, his place