and take
possession. The picture waits for my verdict; it is not to command me,
but I am to settle its claims to praise. That popular fable of the sot
who was picked up dead drunk in the street, carried to the duke's house,
washed and dressed and laid in the duke's bed, and, on his waking,
treated with all obsequious ceremony like the duke, and assured that he
had been insane, owes its popularity to the fact that it symbolizes so
well the state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and
then wakes up, exercises his reason and finds himself a true prince.

Our reading is mendicant and sycophantic. In history our imagination
plays us false. Kingdom and lordship, power and estate, are a gaudier
vocabulary than private John and Edward in a small house and common
day's work; but the things of life are the same to both; the sum total
of both is the same. Why all this deference to Alfred and Scanderbeg and
Gustavus? Suppose they were virtuous; did they wear out virtue? As great
a stake depends on your private act to-day, as followed their public
and renowned steps. When private men shall act with original views,
the lustre will be transferred from the actions of kings to those of
gentlemen.

The world has been instructed by its kings, who have so magnetized the
eyes of nations. It has been taught by this colossal symbol the mutual
reverence that is due from man to man. The joyful loyalty with which men
have everywhere suffered the king, the noble, or the great proprietor
to walk among them by a law of his own, make his own scale of men and
things and reverse theirs, pay for benefits not with money but with
honor, and represent the law in his person, was the hieroglyphic by
which they obscurely signified their consciousness of their own right
and comeliness, the right of every man.

The magnetism which all original action exerts is explained when we
inquire the reason of self-trust. Who is the Trustee? What is the
aboriginal Self, on which a universal reliance may be grounded? What is
the nature and power of that science-baffling star, without parallax,
without calculable elements, which shoots a ray of beauty even into
trivial and impure actions, if the least mark of independence appear?
The inquiry leads us to that source, at once the essence of genius, of
virtue, and of life, which we call Spontaneity or Instinct. We denote
this primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst all later teachings are
tuitions. In that dee