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Character - The Essay
Character - The Essay
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.
I have read that those who listened to Lord Chatham felt that there was
something finer in the man, than anything 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 a 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
pre-existed 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. The class 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 richest; so that I cannot think of him as alone, or poor, or
exiled, or unhappy, or a client, but as a 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 scepticism 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, 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 mid-summer 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, which
sheds a splendor on 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 frhends 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 non-conformity: 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 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 go 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 lions, 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 aboard 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
cartilage; the entrance of a friend adds grace, boldness, and eloquence to
him; and there are persons, he cannot choose but remember, who gave a
transcendant 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 sceptic, 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 install 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 fulfillment 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.
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