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