the wrong. She makes very light of gospels
and prophets, as one who has a great many more to produce and no excess
of time to spare on any one. There is a class of men, individuals of
which appear at long intervals, so eminently endowed with insight and
virtue that they have been unanimously saluted as divine, and who seem
to be an accumulation of that power we consider. Divine persons are
character born, or, to borrow a phrase from Napoleon, they are victory
organized. They are usually received with ill-will, because they are new
and because they set a bound to the exaggeration that has been made
of the personality of the last divine person. Nature never rhymes her
children, nor makes two men alike. When we see a great man we fancy a
resemblance to some historical person, and predict the sequel of his
character and fortune; a result which he is sure to disappoint. None
will ever solve the problem of his character according to our prejudice,
but only in his own high unprecedented way. Character wants room; must
not be crowded on by persons nor be judged from glimpses got in the
press of affairs or on few occasions. It needs perspective, as a great
building. It may not, probably does not, form relations rapidly; and we
should not require rash explanation, either on the popular ethics, or on
our own, of its action.

I look on Sculpture as history. I do not think the Apollo and the Jove
impossible in flesh and blood. Every trait which the artist recorded in
stone he had seen in life, and better than his copy. We have seen many
counterfeits, but we are born believers in great men. How easily we
read in old books, when men were few, of the smallest action of the
patriarchs. We require that a man should be so large and columnar in
the landscape, that it should deserve to be recorded that he arose, and
girded up his loins, and departed to such a place. The most credible
pictures are those of majestic men who prevailed at their entrance, and
convinced the senses; as happened to the eastern magian who was sent to
test the merits of Zertusht or Zoroaster. When the Yunani sage arrived
at Balkh, the Persians tell us, Gushtasp appointed a day on which the
Mobeds of every country should assemble, and a golden chair was placed
for the Yunani sage. Then the beloved of Yezdam, the prophet Zertusht,
advanced into the midst of the assembly. The Yunani sage, on seeing that
chief, said, "This form and this gait cannot lie, and nothing but t