His notions of the world, as he expresses them there at St. Helena,
are almost tragical to consider. He seems to feel the most unaffected
surprise that it has all gone so; that he is flung out on the rock
here, and the World is still moving on its axis. France is great, and
all-great: and at bottom, he is France. England itself, he says, is by
Nature only an appendage of France; "another Isle of Oleron to
France." So it was by _Nature_, by Napoleon-Nature; and yet look how in
fact--HERE AM I! He cannot understand it: inconceivable that the
reality has not corresponded to his program of it; that France was not
all-great, that he was not France. "Strong delusion," that he should
believe the thing to be which _is_ not! The compact, clear-seeing,
decisive Italian nature of him, strong, genuine, which he once had,
has enveloped itself, half-dissolved itself, in a turbid atmosphere
of French fanfaronade. The world was not disposed to be trodden down
underfoot; to be bound into masses, and built together, as _he_ liked,
for a pedestal to France and him: the world had quite other purposes in
view! Napoleon's astonishment is extreme. But alas, what help now? He
had gone that way of his; and Nature also had gone her way. Having once
parted with Reality, he tumbles helpless in Vacuity; no rescue for him.
He had to sink there, mournfully as man seldom did; and break his great
heart, and die,--this poor Napoleon: a great implement too soon wasted,
till it was useless: our last Great Man!

Our last, in a double sense. For here finally these wide roamings of
ours through so many times and places, in search and study of Heroes,
are to terminate. I am sorry for it: there was pleasure for me in this
business, if also much pain. It is a great subject, and a most grave
and wide one, this which, not to be too grave about it, I have named
_Hero-worship_. It enters deeply, as I think, into the secret of
Mankind's ways and vitalest interests in this world, and is well worth
explaining at present. With six months, instead of six days, we might
have done better. I promised to break ground on it; I know not whether
I have even managed to do that. I have had to tear it up in the rudest
manner in order to get into it at all. Often enough, with these abrupt
utterances thrown out isolated, unexplained, has your tolerance been put
to the trial. Tolerance, patient candor, all-hoping favor and
kindness, which I will not speak of at present. The accom