Pandemonium are his
escort. The stars keen-glancing, from the Immensities, send tidings to
him; the graves, silent with their dead, from the Eternities. Deep
calls for him unto Deep.

Thou, O World, how wilt thou secure thyself against this man? Thou
canst not hire him by thy guineas; nor by thy gibbets and
law-penalties restrain him. He eludes thee like a Spirit. Thou canst
not forward him, thou canst not hinder him. Thy penalties, thy
poverties, neglects, contumelies: behold, all these are good for him.
Come to him as an enemy; turn from him as an unfriend; only do not
this one thing,--infect him not with thy own delusion: the benign
Genius, were it by very death, shall guard him against this!--What
wilt thou do with him? He is above thee, like a god. Thou, in thy
stupendous three-inch pattens, art under him. He is thy born king, thy
conqueror and supreme lawgiver: not all the guineas and cannons, and
leather and prunella, under the sky can save thee from him. Hardest
thick-skinned Mammon-world, ruggedest Caliban shall obey him, or
become not Caliban but a cramp. Oh, if in this man, whose eyes can
flash Heaven's lightning, and make all Calibans into a cramp, there
dwelt not, as the essence of his very being, a God's justice, human
Nobleness, Veracity and Mercy,--I should tremble for the world. But
his strength, let us rejoice to understand, is even this: The quantity
of Justice, of Valour and Pity that is in him. To hypocrites and
tailored quacks in high places his eyes are lightning; but they melt
in dewy pity softer than a mother's to the downpressed, maltreated; in
his heart, in his great thought, is a sanctuary for all the wretched.
This world's improvement is forever sure.

'Man of Genius?' Thou hast small notion, meseems, O Maecenas
Twiddledee, of what a Man of Genius is. Read in thy New Testament and
elsewhere,--if, with floods of mealymouthed inanity; with miserable
froth-vortices of Cant now several centuries old, thy New Testament is
not all bedimmed for thee. _Canst_ thou read in thy New Testament at
all? The Highest Man of Genius, knowest thou him; Godlike and a God to
this hour? His crown a Crown of Thorns? Thou fool, with _thy_ empty
Godhoods, Apotheoses _edgegilt_; the Crown of Thorns made into a poor
jewel-room crown, fit for the head of blockheads; the bearing of the
Cross changed to a riding in the Long-Acre Gig! Pause in thy
mass-chantings, in thy litanyings, and Calmuck prayings by machinery;
a