uced. The rude Norse heart burst up into _boundless_
admiration round him; into adoration. He is as a root of so many great
things; the fruit of him is found growing from deep thousands of years,
over the whole field of Teutonic Life. Our own Wednesday, as I said, is
it not still Odin's Day? Wednesbury, Wansborough, Wanstead, Wandsworth:
Odin grew into England too, these are still leaves from that root!
He was the Chief God to all the Teutonic Peoples; their Pattern
Norseman;--in such way did _they_ admire their Pattern Norseman; that
was the fortune he had in the world.

Thus if the man Odin himself have vanished utterly, there is this huge
Shadow of him which still projects itself over the whole History of his
People. For this Odin once admitted to be God, we can understand well
that the whole Scandinavian Scheme of Nature, or dim No-scheme, whatever
it might before have been, would now begin to develop itself altogether
differently, and grow thenceforth in a new manner. What this Odin saw
into, and taught with his runes and his rhymes, the whole Teutonic
People laid to heart and carried forward. His way of thought became
their way of thought:--such, under new conditions, is the history of
every great thinker still. In gigantic confused lineaments, like some
enormous camera-obscure shadow thrown upwards from the dead deeps of the
Past, and covering the whole Northern Heaven, is not that Scandinavian
Mythology in some sort the Portraiture of this man Odin? The gigantic
image of _his_ natural face, legible or not legible there, expanded and
confused in that manner! Ah, Thought, I say, is always Thought. No great
man lives in vain. The History of the world is but the Biography of
great men.

To me there is something very touching in this primeval figure of
Heroism; in such artless, helpless, but hearty entire reception of a
Hero by his fellow-men. Never so helpless in shape, it is the noblest of
feelings, and a feeling in some shape or other perennial as man himself.
If I could show in any measure, what I feel deeply for a long time now,
That it is the vital element of manhood, the soul of man's history here
in our world,--it would be the chief use of this discoursing at present.
We do not now call our great men Gods, nor admire _without_ limit; ah
no, _with_ limit enough! But if we have no great men, or do not admire
at all,--that were a still worse case.

This poor Scandinavian Hero-worship, that whole Norse way of l