s, never had, has given them an immortal soul, which can speak to
the immortal souls of all generations to come?

What but this, that in them--dim it may be and undeveloped, but still
there--lies the divine idea of self-sacrifice as the perfection of
heroism; of self-sacrifice, as the highest duty and the highest joy of
him who claims a kindred with the gods?

Let us say, then, that true heroism must involve self-sacrifice. Those
stories certainly involve it, whether ancient or modern, which the
hearts, not of philosophers merely, or poets, but of the poorest and the
most ignorant, have accepted instinctively as the highest form of moral
beauty--the highest form, and yet one possible to all.

Grace Darling rowing out into the storm toward the wreck.--The "drunken
private of the Buffs," who, prisoner among the Chinese, and commanded to
prostrate himself and kotoo, refused in the name of his country's
honour--"He would not bow to any Chinaman on earth:" and so was knocked
on the head, and died surely a hero's death.--Those soldiers of the
'Birkenhead,' keeping their ranks to let the women and children escape,
while they watched the sharks who in a few minutes would be tearing them
limb from limb.--Or, to go across the Atlantic--for there are heroes in
the Far West--Mr. Bret Harte's "Flynn of Virginia," on the Central
Pacific Railway--the place is shown to travellers--who sacrificed his
life for his married comrade,--

"There, in the drift,
Back to the wall,
He held the timbers
Ready to fall.
Then in the darkness
I heard him call,--
'Run for your life, Jake!
Run for your wife's sake!
Don't wait for me.'

"And that was all
Heard in the din--
Heard of Tom Flynn,
Flynn of Virginia."

Or the engineer, again, on the Mississippi, who, when the steamer caught
fire, held, as he had sworn he would, her bow against the bank till every
soul save he got safe on shore,--

"Through the hot black breath of the burning boat
Jim Bludso's voice was heard;
And they all had trust in his cussedness,
And knew he would keep his word.
And sure's you're born, they all got off
Afore the smokestacks fell,--
And Bludso's ghost went up alone
In the smoke of the 'Prairie Belle.'

"He weren't no saint--but at judgment
I'd run my chance with Jim
'Longside of some pious gentlemen
That wouldn't shake hands with him.
He'd seen his duty--a de