small city a great one. This gives one a pretty good idea of
the distinction in question.

Greatness is great power, producing great effects. It is not enough that
a man has great power in himself; he must show it to all the world in
a way that cannot be hid or gainsaid. He must fill up a certain idea in
the public mind. I have no other notion of greatness than this twofold
definition, great results springing from great inherent energy. The
great in visible objects has relation to that which extends over space;
the great in mental ones has to do with space and time. No man is truly
great who is great only in his lifetime. The test of greatness is the
page of history. Nothing can be said to be great that has a distinct
limit, or that borders on something evidently greater than itself.
Besides, what is short-lived and pampered into mere notoriety is of a
gross and vulgar quality in itself. A Lord Mayor is hardly a great man.
A city orator or patriot of the day only show, by reaching the height
of their wishes, the distance they are at from any true ambition.
Popularity is neither fame nor greatness. A king (as such) is not a
great man. He has great power, but it is not his own. He merely wields
the lever of the state, which a child, an idiot, or a madman can do.
It is the office, not the man we gaze at. Any one else in the same
situation would be just as much an object of abject curiosity. We laugh
at the country girl who having seen a king expressed her disappointment
by saying, 'Why, he is only a man!' Yet, knowing this, we run to see a
king as if he was something more than a man.--To display the greatest
powers, unless they are applied to great purposes, makes nothing for
the character of greatness. To throw a barleycorn through the eye of a
needle, to multiply nine figures by nine in the memory, argues definite
dexterity of body and capacity of mind, but nothing comes of
either. There is a surprising power at work, but the effects are not
proportionate, or such as take hold of the imagination. To impress the
idea of power on others, they must be made in some way to feel it. It
must be communicated to their understandings in the shape of an increase
of knowledge, or it must subdue and overawe them by subjecting their
wills. Admiration to be solid and lasting must be founded on proofs
from which we have no means of escaping; it is neither a slight nor a
voluntary gift. A mathematician who solves a profound problem, a po