_ CHARACTER.
The sun set; but set not his hope:
Stars rose; his faith was earlier up:
Fixed on the enormous galaxy,
Deeper and older seemed his eye:
And matched his sufferance sublime
The taciturnity of time.
He spoke, and words more soft than rain
Brought the Age of Gold again:
His action won such reverence sweet,
As hid all measure of the feat.
Work of his hand
He nor commends nor grieves
Pleads for itself the fact;
As unrepenting Nature leaves
Her every act.
III. CHARACTER.
I HAVE read that those who listened to Lord Chatham
felt that there was something finer in the man than
any thing which he said. It has been complained of
our brilliant English historian of the French
Revolution that when he has told all his facts about
Mirabeau, they do not justify his estimate of his
genius. The Gracchi, Agis, Cleomenes, and others of
Plutarch's heroes, do not in the record of facts equal
their own fame. Sir Philip Sidney, the Earl of Essex,
Sir Walter Raleigh, are men of great figure and of
few deeds. We cannot find the smallest part of the
personal weight of Washington in the narrative of his
exploits. The authority of the name of Schiller is
too great for his books. This inequality of the
reputation to the works or the anecdotes is not
accounted for by saying that the reverberation is
longer than the thunder-clap, but somewhat resided
in these men which begot an expectation that outran
all their performance. The largest part of their power
was latent. This is that which we call Character,--a
reserved force which acts directly by presence, and
without means. It is conceived of as a certain
undemonstrable force, a Familiar or Genius, by whose
impulses the man is guided but whose counsels he
cannot impart; which is company for him, so that such
men are often solitary, or if they chance to be social,
do not need society but can entertain themselves very
well alone. The purest literary talent appears at one
time great, at another time small, but character is of
a stellar and undiminishable greatness. What others
effect by talent or by eloquence, this man accomplishes
by some magnetism. "Half his strength he put not forth."
His victories are by demonstration of superiority, and
not by crossing of bayonets. He conquers because his
arrival alters the face of affairs. "O Iole! how did
you know that Hercules was a god?" "Because," answered
Iole, "I was content the moment my eyes fell on him.
When I beheld Theseus, I desired that I might see him
offer battle, or at least guide his horses in the
chariot-race; but Hercules did not wait for a contest;
he conquered whether he stood, or walked, or sat, or
whatever thing he did." Man, ordinarily a pendant to
events, only half attached, and that awkwardly, to the
world he lives in, in these examples appears to share
the life of things, and to be an expression of the same
laws which control the tides and the sun, numbers and
quantities.
But to use a more modest illustration and nearer
home, I observe that in our political elections,
where this element, if it appears at all, can only
occur in its coarsest form, we sufficiently understand
its incomparable rate. The people know that they need
in their representative much more than talent, namely
the power to make his talent trusted. They cannot come
at their ends by sending to Congress a learned, acute,
and fluent speaker, if he be not one who, before he
was appointed by the people to represent them, was
appointed by Almighty God to stand for a fact,--
invincibly persuaded of that fact in himself,--so
that the most confident and the most violent persons
learn that here is resistance on which both impudence
and terror are wasted, namely faith in a fact. The men
who carry their points do not need to inquire of their
constituents what they should say, but are themselves
the country which they represent; nowhere are its
emotions or opinions so instant and true as in them;
nowhere so pure from a selfish infusion. The constituency
at home hearkens to their words, watches the color of
their cheek, and therein, as in a glass, dresses its
own. Our public assemblies are pretty good tests of
manly force. Our frank countrymen of the west and south
have a taste for character, and like to know whether
the New Englander is a substantial man, or whether the
hand can pass through him.
The same motive force appears in trade. There are
geniuses in trade, as well as in war, or the State,
or letters; and the reason why this or that man is
fortunate is not to be told. It lies in the man;
that is all anybody can tell you about it. See him
and you will know as easily why he succeeds, as, if
you see Napoleon, you would comprehend his fortune.
In the new objects we recognize the old game, the
Habit of fronting the fact, and not dealing with it
at second hand, through the perceptions of somebody
else. Nature seems to authorize trade, as soon as
you see the natural merchant, who appears not so much
a private agent as her factor and Minister of Commerce.
His natural probity combines with his insight into
the fabric of society to put him above tricks, and he
communicates to all his own faith that contracts are
of no private interpretation. The habit of his mind is
a reference to standards of natural equity and public
advantage; and he inspires respect and the wish to
deal with him, both for the quiet spirit of honor
which attends him, and for the intellectual pastime
which the spectacle of so much ability affords. This
immensely stretched trade, which makes the capes of
the Southern Ocean his wharves, and the Atlantic Sea
his familiar port, centres in his brain only; and
nobody in the universe can make his place good. In his
parlor I see very well that he has been at hard work
this morning, with that knitted brow and that settled
humor, which all his desire to be courteous cannot
shake off. I see plainly how many firm acts have been
done; how many valiant noes have this day been spoken,
when others would have uttered ruinous yeas. I see,
with the pride of art and skill of masterly arithmetic
and power of remote combination, the consciousness of
being an agent and playfellow of the original laws of
the world. He too believes that none can supply him,
and that a man must be born to trade or he cannot learn it.
This virtue draws the mind more when it appears
in action to ends not so mixed. It works with most
energy in the smallest companies and in private
relations. In all cases it is an extraordinary and
incomputable agent. The excess of physical strength
is paralyzed by it. Higher natures overpower lower
ones by affecting them with a certain sleep. The
faculties are locked up, and offer no resistance.
Perhaps that is the universal law. When the high
cannot bring up the low to itself, it benumbs it,
as man charms down the resistance of the lower animals.
Men exert on each other a similar occult power. How
often has the influence of a true master realized all
the tales of magic! A river of command seemed to run
down from his eyes into all those who beheld him, a
torrent of strong sad light, like an Ohio or Danube,
which pervaded them with his thoughts and colored all
events with the hue of his mind. "What means did you
employ?" was the question asked of the wife of Concini,
in regard to her treatment of Mary of Medici; and the
answer was, "Only that influence which every strong
mind has over a weak one." Cannot Caesar in irons
shuffle off the irons and transfer them to the person
of Hippo or Thraso the turnkey? Is an iron handcuff so
immutable a bond? Suppose a slaver on the coast of
Guinea should take on board a gang of negroes which
should contain persons of the stamp of Toussaint
L'Ouverture: or, let us fancy, under these swarthy
masks he has a gang of Washingtons in chains. When
they arrive at Cuba, will the relative order of the
ship's company be the same? Is there nothing but rope
and iron? Is there no love, no reverence? Is there
never a glimpse of right in a poor slave-captain's
mind; and cannot these be supposed available to break
or elude or in any manner overmatch the tension of an
inch or two of iron ring?
This is a natural power, like light and heat, and all
nature cooperates with it. The reason why we feel
one man's presence and do not feel another's is as
simple as gravity. Truth is the summit of being;
justice is the application of it to affairs. All
individual natures stand in a scale, according to
the purity of this element in them. The will of the
pure runs down from them into other natures as water
runs down from a higher into a lower vessel. This
natural force is no more to be withstood than any
other natural force. We can drive a stone upward for
a moment into the air, but it is yet true that all
stones will forever fall; and whatever instances can
be quoted of unpunished theft, or of a lie which
somebody credited, justice must prevail, and it is the
privilege of truth to make itself believed. Character
is this moral order seen through the medium of an
individual nature. An individual is an encloser. Time
and space, liberty and necessity, truth and thought,
are left at large no longer. Now, the universe is a
close or pound. All things exist in the man tinged with
the manners of his soul. With what quality is in him he
infuses all nature that he can reach; nor does he tend
to lose himself in vastness, but, at how long a curve
soever, all his regards return into his own good at
last. He animates all he can, and he sees only what he
animates. He encloses the world, as the patriot does his
country, as a material basis for his character, and a
theatre for action. A healthy soul stands united with
the Just and the True, as the magnet arranges itself with
the pole; so that he stands to all beholders like a
transparent object betwixt them and the sun, and whoso
journeys towards the sun, journeys towards that person.
He is thus the medium of the highest influence to all
who are not on the same level. Thus, men of character
are the conscience of the society to which they belong.
The natural measure of this power is the resistance
of circumstances. Impure men consider life as it is
reflected in opinions, events, and persons. They cannot
see the action until it is done. Yet its moral element
preexisted in the actor, and its quality as right or
wrong it was easy to predict. Everything in nature is
bipolar, or has a positive and negative pole. There is
a male and a female, a spirit and a fact, a north and a
south. Spirit is the positive, the event is the negative.
Will is the north, action the south pole. Character may
be ranked as having its natural place in the north. It
shares the magnetic currents of the system. The feeble
souls are drawn to the south or negative pole. They look
at the profit or hurt of the action. They never behold a
principle until it is lodged in a person. They do not
wish to be lovely, but to be loved. Men of character
like to hear of their faults; the other class do not
like to hear of faults; they worship events; secure to
them a fact, a connection, a certain chain of circumstances,
and they will ask no more. The hero sees that the event
is ancillary; it must follow him. A given order of events
has no power to secure to him the satisfaction which the
imagination attaches to it; the soul of goodness escapes
from any set of circumstances; whilst prosperity belongs
to a certain mind, and will introduce that power and
victory which is its natural fruit, into any order of
events. No change of circumstances can repair a defect
of character. We boast our emancipation from many
superstitions; but if we have broken any idols it is
through a transfer of the idolatry. What have I gained,
that I no longer immolate a bull to Jove or to Neptune,
or a mouse to Hecate; that I do not tremble before the
Eumenides, or the Catholic Purgatory, or the Calvinistic
Judgment-day,--if I quake at opinion, the public opinion,
as we call it; or at the threat of assault, or contumely,
or bad neighbors, or poverty, or mutilation, or at the
rumor of revolution, or of murder? If I quake, what matters
it what I quake at? Our proper vice takes form in one or
another shape, according to the sex, age, or temperament
of the person, and, if we are capable of fear, will readily
find terrors. The covetousness or the malignity which
saddens me when I ascribe it to society, is my own. I am
always environed by myself. On the other part, rectitude
is a perpetual victory, celebrated not by cries of joy
but by serenity, which is joy fixed or habitual. It is
disgraceful to fly to events for confirmation of our truth
and worth. The capitalist does not run every hour to the
broker to coin his advantages into current money of the
realm; he is satisfied to read in the quotations of the
market that his stocks have risen. The same transport
which the occurrence of the best events in the best order
would occasion me, I must learn to taste purer in the
perception that my position is every hour meliorated, and
does already command those events I desire. That exultation
is only to be checked by the foresight of an order of
things so excellent as to throw all our prosperities into
the deepest shade.
The face which character wears to me is self-
sufficingness. I revere the person who is riches;
so that I cannot think of him as alone, or poor,
or exiled, or unhappy, or a client, but as perpetual
patron, benefactor, and beatified man. Character is
centrality, the impossibility of being displaced or
overset. A man should give us a sense of mass. Society
is frivolous, and shreds its day into scraps, its
conversation into ceremonies and escapes. But if I go
to see an ingenious man I shall think myself poorly
entertained if he give me nimble pieces of benevolence
and etiquette; rather he shall stand stoutly in his
place and let me apprehend if it were only his
resistance; know that I have encountered a new and
positive quality;--great refreshment for both of us.
It is much that he does not accept the conventional
opinions and practices. That nonconformity will remain
a goad and remembrancer, and every inquirer will have
to dispose of him, in the first place. There is nothing
real or useful that is not a seat of war. Our houses
ring with laughter and personal and critical gossip,
but it helps little. But the uncivil, unavailable man,
who is a problem and a threat to society, whom it cannot
let pass in silence but must either worship or hate,--and
to whom all parties feel related, both the leaders of
opinion and the obscure and eccentric,--he helps; he
puts America and Europe in the wrong, and destroys the
skepticism which says, 'man is a doll, let us eat and
drink, 'tis the best we can do,' by illuminating the
untried and unknown. Acquiescence in the establishment
and appeal to the public, indicate infirm faith, heads
which are not clear, and which must see a house built,
before they can comprehend the plan of it. The wise man
not only leaves out of his thought the many, but leaves
out the few. Fountains, the self-moved, the absorbed,
the commander because he is commanded, the assured, the
primary,--they are good; for these announce the instant
presence of supreme power.
Our action should rest mathematically on our
substance. In nature, there are no false valuations.
A pound of water in the ocean-tempest has no more
gravity than in a midsummer pond. All things work
exactly according to their quality and according to
their quantity; attempt nothing they cannot do, except
man only. He has pretension; he wishes and attempts
things beyond his force. I read in a book of English
memoirs, "Mr. Fox (afterwards Lord Holland) said, he
must have the Treasury; he had served up to it, and
would have it." Xenophon and his Ten Thousand were
quite equal to what they attempted, and did it; so
equal, that it was not suspected to be a grand and
inimitable exploit. Yet there stands that fact
unrepeated, a high-water mark in military history.
Many have attempted it since, and not been equal to
it. It is only on reality that any power of action
can be based. No institution will be better than the
institutor. I knew an amiable and accomplished person
who undertook a practical reform, yet I was never able
to find in him the enterprise of love he took in hand.
He adopted it by ear and by the understanding from the
books he had been reading. All his action was tentative,
a piece of the city carried out into the fields, and
was the city still, and no new fact, and could not
inspire enthusiasm. Had there been something latent in
the man, a terrible undemonstrated genius agitating and
embarrassing his demeanor, we had watched for its advent.
It is not enough that the intellect should see the evils
and their remedy. We shall still postpone our existence,
nor take the ground to which we are entitled, whilst it
is only a thought and not a spirit that incites us. We
have not yet served up to it.
These are properties of life, and another trait
is the notice of incessant growth. Men should be
intelligent and earnest. They must also make us
feel that they have a controlling happy future
opening before them, whose early twilights already
kindle in the passing hour. The hero is misconceived
and misreported; he cannot therefore wait to unravel
any man's blunders; he is again on his road, adding
new powers and honors to his domain and new claims
on your heart, which will bankrupt you if you have
loitered about the old things and have not kept your
relation to him by adding to your wealth. New actions
are the only apologies and explanations of old ones
which the noble can bear to offer or to receive. If
your friend has displeased you, you shall not sit
down to consider it, for he has already lost all
memory of the passage, and has doubled his power to
serve you, and ere you can rise up again will burden
you with blessings.
We have no pleasure in thinking of a benevolence
that is only measured by its works. Love is
inexhaustible, and if its estate is wasted, its
granary emptied, still cheers and enriches, and
the man, though he sleep, seems to purify the air
and his house to adorn the landscape and strengthen
the laws. People always recognize this difference.
We know who is benevolent, by quite other means than
the amount of subscription to soup-societies. It is
only low merits that can be enumerated. Fear, when
your friends say to you what you have done well, and
say it through; but when they stand with uncertain
timid looks of respect and half-dislike, and must
suspend their judgment for years to come, you may
begin to hope. Those who live to the future must
always appear selfish to those who live to the present.
Therefore it was droll in the good Riemer, who has
written memoirs of Goethe, to make out a list of his
donations and good deeds, as, so many hundred thalers
given to Stilling, to Hegel, to Tischbein; a lucrative
place found for Professor Voss, a post under the Grand
Duke for Herder, a pension for Meyer, two professors
recommended to foreign universities; &c., &c. The
longest list of specifications of benefit would look
very short. A man is a poor creature if he is to be
measured so. For all these of course are exceptions,
and the rule and hodiernal life of a good man is
benefaction. The true charity of Goethe is to be
inferred from the account he gave Dr. Eckermann of the
way in which he had spent his fortune. "Each bon-mot
of mine has cost a purse of gold. Half a million of my
own money, the fortune I inherited, my salary and
the large income derived from my writings for fifty
years back, have been expended to instruct me in
what I now know. I have besides seen," &c.
I own it is but poor chat and gossip to go to
enumerate traits of this simple and rapid power,
and we are painting the lightning with charcoal;
but in these long nights and vacations I like to
console myself so. Nothing but itself can copy
it. A word warm from the heart enriches me. I
surrender at discretion. How death-cold is literary
genius before this fire of life! These are the
touches that reanimate my heavy soul and give it
eyes to pierce the dark of nature. I find, where I
thought myself poor, there was I most rich. Thence
comes a new intellectual exaltation, to be again
rebuked by some new exhibition of character.
Strange alternation of attraction and repulsion!
Character repudiates intellect, yet excites it; and
character passes into thought, is published so, and
then is ashamed before new flashes of moral worth.
Character is nature in the highest form. It is of no
use to ape it or to contend with it. Somewhat is
possible of resistance, and of persistence, and of
creation, to this power, which will foil all emulation.
This masterpiece is best where no hands but nature's
have been laid on it. Care is taken that the greatly-
destined shall slip up into life in the shade, with no
thousand-eyed Athens to watch and blazon every new
thought, every blushing emotion of young genius. Two
persons lately, very young children of the most high
God, have given me occasion for thought. When I explored
the source of their sanctity and charm for the imagination,
it seemed as if each answered, 'From my nonconformity; I
never listened to your people's law, or to what they call
their gospel, and wasted my time. I was content with the
simple rural poverty of my own; hence this sweetness; my
work never reminds you of that;--is pure of that.' And
nature advertises me in such persons that in democratic
America she will not be democratized. How cloistered and
constitutionally sequestered from the market and from
scandal! It was only this morning that I sent away some
wild flowers of these wood-gods. They are a relief from
literature,--these fresh draughts from the sources of
thought and sentiment; as we read, in an age of polish
and criticism, the first lines of written prose and verse
of a nation. How captivating is their devotion to their
favorite books, whether Aeschylus, Dante, Shakspeare, or
Scott, as feeling that they have a stake in that book;
who touches that, touches them;--and especially the total
solitude of the critic, the Patmos of thought from which
he writes, in unconsciousness of any eyes that shall ever
read this writing. Could they dream on still, as angels,
and not wake to comparisons, and to be flattered! Yet some
natures are too good to be spoiled by praise, and wherever
the vein of thought reaches down into the profound, there
is no danger from vanity. Solemn friends will warn them of
the danger of the head's being turned by the flourish of
trumpets, but they can afford to smile. I remember the
indignation of an eloquent Methodist at the kind admonitions
of a Doctor of Divinity,--'My friend, a man can neither be
praised nor insulted.' But forgive the counsels; they are
very natural. I remember the thought which occurred to me
when some ingenious and spiritual foreigners came to
America, was, Have you been victimized in being brought
hither?--or, prior to that, answer me this, 'Are you
victimizable?'
As I have said, Nature keeps these sovereignties
in her own hands, and however pertly our sermons
and disciplines would divide some share of credit,
and teach that the laws fashion the citizen, she
goes her own gait and puts the wisest in the wrong.
She makes very light of gospels and prophets, as
one who has a great many more to produce and no
excess of time to spare on any one. There is a class
of men, individuals of which appear at long intervals,
so eminently endowed with insight and virtue that
they have been unanimously saluted as divine, and who
seem to be an accumulation of that power we consider.
Divine persons are character born, or, to borrow a
phrase from Napoleon, they are victory organized.
They are usually received with ill-will, because they
are new and because they set a bound to the exaggeration
that has been made of the personality of the last divine
person. Nature never rhymes her children, nor makes two
men alike. When we see a great man we fancy a resemblance
to some historical person, and predict the sequel of his
character and fortune; a result which he is sure to
disappoint. None will ever solve the problem of his
character according to our prejudice, but only in his
own high unprecedented way. Character wants room; must
not be crowded on by persons nor be judged from glimpses
got in the press of affairs or on few occasions. It
needs perspective, as a great building. It may not,
probably does not, form relations rapidly; and we should
not require rash explanation, either on the popular
ethics, or on our own, of its action.
I look on Sculpture as history. I do not think the
Apollo and the Jove impossible in flesh and blood.
Every trait which the artist recorded in stone he
had seen in life, and better than his copy. We have
seen many counterfeits, but we are born believers in
great men. How easily we read in old books, when men
were few, of the smallest action of the patriarchs.
We require that a man should be so large and columnar
in the landscape, that it should deserve to be
recorded that he arose, and girded up his loins, and
departed to such a place. The most credible pictures
are those of majestic men who prevailed at their
entrance, and convinced the senses; as happened to
the eastern magian who was sent to test the merits
of Zertusht or Zoroaster. When the Yunani sage arrived
at Balkh, the Persians tell us, Gushtasp appointed a
day on which the Mobeds of every country should
assemble, and a golden chair was placed for the Yunani
sage. Then the beloved of Yezdam, the prophet Zertusht,
advanced into the midst of the assembly. The Yunani
sage, on seeing that chief, said, "This form and this
gait cannot lie, and nothing but truth can proceed
from them." Plato said it was impossible not to
believe in the children of the gods, "though they
should speak without probable or necessary arguments."
I should think myself very unhappy in my associates if
I could not credit the best things in history. "John
Bradshaw," says Milton, "appears like a consul, from
whom the fasces are not to depart with the year; so
that not on the tribunal only, but throughout his life,
you would regard him as sitting in judgment upon kings."
I find it more credible, since it is anterior information,
that one man should know heaven, as the Chinese say, than
that so many men should know the world. "The virtuous
prince confronts the gods, without any misgiving. He
waits a hundred ages till a sage comes, and does not
doubt. He who confronts the gods, without any misgiving,
knows heaven; he who waits a hundred ages until a sage
comes, without doubting, knows men. Hence the virtuous
prince moves, and for ages shows empire the way." But
there is no need to seek remote examples. He is a dull
observer whose experience has not taught him the reality
and force of magic, as well as of chemistry. The coldest
precisian cannot go abroad without encountering
inexplicable influences. One man fastens an eye on him
and the graves of the memory render up their dead; the
secrets that make him wretched either to keep or to
betray must be yielded;--another, and he cannot speak,
and the bones of his body seem to lose their cartilages;
the entrance of a friend adds grace, boldness, and
eloquence to him; and there are persons he cannot choose
but remember, who gave a transcendent expansion to his
thought, and kindled another life in his bosom.
What is so excellent as strict relations of amity,
when they spring from this deep root? The sufficient
reply to the skeptic who doubts the power and the
furniture of man, is in that possibility of joyful
intercourse with persons, which makes the faith and
practice of all reasonable men. I know nothing which
life has to offer so satisfying as the profound good
understanding which can subsist after much exchange of
good offices, between two virtuous men, each of whom
is sure of himself and sure of his friend. It is a
happiness which postpones all other gratifications,
and makes politics, and commerce, and churches, cheap.
For when men shall meet as they ought, each a benefactor,
a shower of stars, clothed with thoughts, with deeds,
with accomplishments, it should be the festival of
nature which all things announce. Of such friendship,
love in the sexes is the first symbol, as all other
things are symbols of love. Those relations to the best
men, which, at one time, we reckoned the romances of
youth, become, in the progress of the character, the
most solid enjoyment.
If it were possible to live in right relations with
men!--if we could abstain from asking anything of
them, from asking their praise, or help, or pity,
and content us with compelling them through the
virtue of the eldest laws! Could we not deal with
a few persons,--with one person,--after the unwritten
statutes, and make an experiment of their efficacy?
Could we not pay our friend the compliment of truth,
of silence, of forbearing? Need we be so eager to
seek him? If we are related, we shall meet. It was a
tradition of the ancient world that no metamorphosis
could hide a god from a god; and there is a Greek
verse which runs,--
"The Gods are to each other not unknown."
Friends also follow the laws of divine necessity;
they gravitate to each other, and cannot otherwise:--
When each the other shall avoid,
Shall each by each be most enjoyed.
Their relation is not made, but allowed. The gods
must seat themselves without seneschal in our
Olympus, and as they can instal themselves by
seniority divine. Society is spoiled if pains are
taken, if the associates are brought a mile to meet.
And if it be not society, it is a mischievous, low,
degrading jangle, though made up of the best. All the
greatness of each is kept back and every foible in
painful activity, as if the Olympians should meet to
exchange snuff-boxes.
Life goes headlong. We chase some flying scheme, or
we are hunted by some fear or command behind us. But
if suddenly we encounter a friend, we pause; our heat
and hurry look foolish enough; now pause, now possession
is required, and the power to swell the moment from the
resources of the heart. The moment is all, in all noble
relations.
A divine person is the prophecy of the mind; a
friend is the hope of the heart. Our beatitude
waits for the fulfilment of these two in one. The
ages are opening this moral force. All force is
the shadow or symbol of that. Poetry is joyful
and strong as it draws its inspiration thence. Men
write their names on the world as they are filled
with this. History has been mean; our nations have
been mobs; we have never seen a man: that divine
form we do not yet know, but only the dream and
prophecy of such: we do not know the majestic manners
which belong to him, which appease and exalt the
beholder. We shall one day see that the most private
is the most public energy, that quality atones for
quantity, and grandeur of character acts in the dark,
and succors them who never saw it. What greatness has
yet appeared is beginnings and encouragements to us
in this direction. The history of those gods and saints
which the world has written and then worshipped, are
documents of character. The ages have exulted in the
manners of a youth who owed nothing to fortune, and
who was hanged at the Tyburn of his nation, who, by
the pure quality of his nature, shed an epic splendor
around the facts of his death which has transfigured
every particular into an universal symbol for the
eyes of mankind. This great defeat is hitherto our
highest fact. But the mind requires a victory to the
senses; a force of character which will convert judge,
jury, soldier, and king; which will rule animal and
mineral virtues, and blend with the courses of sap,
of rivers, of winds, of stars, and of moral agents.
If we cannot attain at a bound to these grandeurs,
at least let us do them homage. In society, high
advantages are set down to the possessor as
disadvantages. It requires the more wariness in
our private estimates. I do not forgive in my
friends the failure to know a fine character and
to entertain it with thankful hospitality. When
at last that which we have always longed for is
arrived and shines on us with glad rays out of
that far celestial land, then to be coarse, then
to be critical and treat such a visitant with the
jabber and suspicion of the streets, argues a
vulgarity that seems to shut the doors of heaven.
This is confusion, this the right insanity, when
the soul no longer knows its own, nor where its
allegiance, its religion, are due. Is there any
religion but this, to know that wherever in the
wide desert of being the holy sentiment we cherish
has opened into a flower, it blooms for me? if none
sees it, I see it; I am aware, if I alone, of the
greatness of the fact. Whilst it blooms, I will
keep sabbath or holy time, and suspend my gloom
and my folly and jokes. Nature is indulged by the
presence of this guest. There are many eyes that
can detect and honor the prudent and household
virtues; there are many that can discern Genius on
his starry track, though the mob is incapable; but
when that love which is all-suffering, all-abstaining,
all-aspiring, which has vowed to itself that it will
be a wretch and also a fool in this world sooner than
soil its white hands by any compliances, comes into
our streets and houses,--only the pure and aspiring
can know its face, and the only compliment they can
pay it is to own it. _