it otherwise! Yes, it is far from us: but
it must come; thank God, it is visibly coming. Till it do come, what
have we? Ballot-boxes, suffrages, French Revolutions:--if we are as
Valets, and do not know the Hero when we see him, what good are all
these? A heroic Cromwell comes; and for a hundred and fifty years he
cannot have a vote from us. Why, the insincere, unbelieving world is
the _natural property_ of the Quack, and of the Father of quacks and
quackeries! Misery, confusion, unveracity are alone possible there. By
ballot-boxes we alter the _figure_ of our Quack; but the substance of
him continues. The Valet-World _has_ to be governed by the Sham-Hero, by
the King merely _dressed_ in King-gear. It is his; he is its! In brief,
one of two things: We shall either learn to know a Hero, a true Governor
and Captain, somewhat better, when we see him; or else go on to be
forever governed by the Unheroic;--had we ballot-boxes clattering at
every street-corner, there were no remedy in these.

Poor Cromwell,--great Cromwell! The inarticulate Prophet; Prophet who
could not _speak_. Rude, confused, struggling to utter himself, with his
savage depth, with his wild sincerity; and he looked so strange,
among the elegant Euphemisms, dainty little Falklands, didactic
Chillingworths, diplomatic Clarendons! Consider him. An outer hull
of chaotic confusion, visions of the Devil, nervous dreams, almost
semi-madness; and yet such a clear determinate man's-energy working in
the heart of that. A kind of chaotic man. The ray as of pure starlight
and fire, working in such an element of boundless hypochondria, unformed
black of darkness! And yet withal this hypochondria, what was it but
the very greatness of the man? The depth and tenderness of his wild
affections: the quantity of _sympathy_ he had with things,--the quantity
of insight he would yet get into the heart of things, the mastery he
would yet get over things: this was his hypochondria. The man's misery,
as man's misery always does, came of his greatness. Samuel Johnson too
is that kind of man. Sorrow-stricken, half-distracted; the wide element
of mournful _black_ enveloping him,--wide as the world. It is the
character of a prophetic man; a man with his whole soul _seeing_, and
struggling to see.

On this ground, too, I explain to myself Cromwell's reputed confusion of
speech. To himself the internal meaning was sun-clear; but the material
with which he was to clothe it in utterance