ot predominant
among the impulses that governed him in this; and, again, whether it
is not probable that, like Alfieri and other aristocratic lovers of
freedom, he would not ultimately have shrunk from the result of his
own equalising doctrines; and, though zealous enough in lowering
those _above_ his own level, rather recoil from the task of raising
up those who were _below_ it.

With regard to the first point, it may be conceded, without deducting
much from his sincere zeal in the cause, that the gratification of
his thirst of fame, and, above all, perhaps, that supply of
excitement so necessary to him, to whet, as it were, the edge of his
self-wearing spirit, were not the least of the attractions and
incitements which a struggle under the banners of Freedom presented
to him. It is also but too certain that, destined as he was to
endless disenchantment, from that singular and painful union which
existed in his nature of the creative imagination that calls up
illusions, and the cool, searching sagacity that, at once, detects
their hollowness, he could not long have gone on, even in a path so
welcome to him, without finding the hopes with which his fancy had
strewed it withering away beneath him at every step.

In politics, as in every other pursuit, his ambition was to be among
the first; nor would it have been from the want of a due appreciation
of all that is noblest and most disinterested in patriotism, that he
would ever have stooped his flight to any less worthy aim. The
following passage in one of his Journals will be remembered by the
reader:--"To be the first man _(not_ the Dictator), not the Sylla,
but the Washington, or Aristides, the leader in talent and truth, is
to be next to the Divinity." With such high and pure notions of
political eminence, he could not be otherwise than fastidious as to
the means of attaining it; nor can it be doubted that with the sort
of vulgar and sometimes sullied instruments which all popular leaders
must stoop to employ, his love of truth, his sense of honour, his
impatience of injustice, would have led him constantly into such
collisions as must have ended in repulsion and disgust; while the
companionship of those beneath him, a tax all demagogues must pay,
would, as soon as it had ceased to amuse his fancy for the new and
the ridiculous, have shocked his taste and mortified his pride. The
distaste with which, as appears from more than one of his letters, he
was disposed to