, they were an inevitable thing. That such a man, with the eye
to see, with the heart to dare, should advance, from post to post, from
victory to victory, till the Huntingdon Farmer became, by whatever name
you might call him, the acknowledged Strongest Man in England, virtually
the King of England, requires no magic to explain it--!

Truly it is a sad thing for a people, as for a man, to fall into
Scepticism, into dilettantism, insincerity; not to know Sincerity when
they see it. For this world, and for all worlds, what curse is so fatal?
The heart lying dead, the eye cannot see. What intellect remains is
merely the _vulpine_ intellect. That a true _King_ be sent them is of
small use; they do not know him when sent. They say scornfully, Is this
your King? The Hero wastes his heroic faculty in bootless contradiction
from the unworthy; and can accomplish little. For himself he does
accomplish a heroic life, which is much, which is all; but for the world
he accomplishes comparatively nothing. The wild rude Sincerity, direct
from Nature, is not glib in answering from the witness-box: in your
small-debt _pie-powder_ court, he is scouted as a counterfeit. The
vulpine intellect "detects" him. For being a man worth any thousand
men, the response your Knox, your Cromwell gets, is an argument for two
centuries whether he was a man at all. God's greatest gift to this Earth
is sneeringly flung away. The miraculous talisman is a paltry plated
coin, not fit to pass in the shops as a common guinea.

Lamentable this! I say, this must be remedied. Till this be remedied in
some measure, there is nothing remedied. "Detect quacks"? Yes do, for
Heaven's sake; but know withal the men that are to be trusted! Till
we know that, what is all our knowledge; how shall we even so much
as "detect"? For the vulpine sharpness, which considers itself to be
knowledge, and "detects" in that fashion, is far mistaken. Dupes indeed
are many: but, of all _dupes_, there is none so fatally situated as
he who lives in undue terror of being duped. The world does exist; the
world has truth in it, or it would not exist! First recognize what is
true, we shall _then_ discern what is false; and properly never till
then.

"Know the men that are to be trusted:" alas, this is yet, in these days,
very far from us. The sincere alone can recognize sincerity. Not a Hero
only is needed, but a world fit for him; a world not of _Valets_;--the
Hero comes almost in vain to