a Tool-using Animal," concludes Teufelsdroeckh in his abrupt
way; "of which truth Clothes are but one example: and surely if we
consider the interval between the first wooden Dibble fashioned by
man, and those Liverpool Steam-carriages, or the British House of
Commons, we shall note what progress he has made. He digs up certain
black stones from the bosom of the earth, and says to them, _Transport
me and this luggage at the rate of five-and-thirty miles an hour_; and
they do it: he collects, apparently by lot, six hundred and
fifty-eight miscellaneous individuals, and says to them, _Make this
nation toil for us, bleed for us, hunger and sorrow and sin for us_;
and they do it."

DANTE

From 'Heroes and Hero-Worship'

Many volumes have been written by way of commentary on Dante and his
Book; yet, on the whole, with no great result. His Biography is, as it
were, irrevocably lost for us. An unimportant, wandering,
sorrow-stricken man, not much note was taken of him while he lived;
and the most of that has vanished, in the long space that now
intervenes. It is five centuries since he ceased writing and living
here. After all commentaries, the Book itself is mainly what we know
of him. The Book;--and one might add that Portrait commonly attributed
to Giotto, which, looking on it, you cannot help inclining to think
genuine, whoever did it. To me it is a most touching face; perhaps of
all faces that I know, the most so. Lonely there, painted as on
vacancy, with the simple laurel wound round it; the deathless sorrow
and pain, the known victory which is also deathless;--significant of
the whole history of Dante! I think it is the mournfulest face that
ever was painted from reality; an altogether tragic, heart-affecting
face. There is in it, as foundation of it, the softness, tenderness,
gentle affection as of a child; but all this is as if congealed into
sharp contradiction, into abnegation, isolation, proud, hopeless pain.
A soft, ethereal soul, looking-out so stern, implacable,
grim-trenchant, as from imprisonment of thick-ribbed ice! Withal it is
a silent pain too, a silent scornful one: the lip is curled in a kind
of godlike disdain of the thing that is eating out his heart, as if it
were withal a mean, insignificant thing, as if he whom it had power to
torture and strangle were greater than it. The face of one wholly in
protest, and lifelong, unsurrendering battle, against the world.
Affection all converted into in