hatever he dared to think he dared to do. No practical emergency
ever found him deficient either in sagacity or resolution, however it
might have found him deficient in mercy. He overrode the moral judgments
of ordinary men as fiercely as he overrode their physical resistance,
crushing prejudices as well as Parliaments, ideas as well as armies; and
whether his task was to cut off the head of an unmanageable king, or
disperse an unmanageable legislative assembly, or massacre an
unmanageable Irish garrison, or boldly establish himself as the
uncontrolled supreme authority of the land, he ever did it thoroughly
and unrelentingly, and could always throw the responsibility of the
deed on the God of battles and the God of Cromwell. In all this we
observe the operation of a colossal practical force rather than an ideal
power, of grit rather than heroism. However much he may command that
portion of our sympathies which thrill at the touch of vigorous action,
there are other sentiments of our being which detect something partial,
vulgar, and repulsive even in his undisputed greatness.

In truth, grit, in its highest forms, is not a form of courage deserving
of unmixed respect and admiration. Admitting its immense practical
influence in public and private life, conceding its value in the rough,
direct struggle of person with person and opinions with institutions, it
is still by no means the top and crown of heroic character; for it lacks
the element of beauty and the element of sympathy; it is individual,
unsocial, bigoted, relatively to occasions; and its force has no
necessary connection with grandeur, generosity, and enlargement of soul.
Even in great men, like Cromwell, there is something in its aspect which
is harsh, ugly, haggard, and ungenial; even in them it is strong by the
stifling of many a generous thought and tolerant feeling; and when it
descends to animate sterile and stunted natures, endowed with sufficient
will to make their meanness or malignity efficient, its unfruitful force
is absolutely hateful. It has done good work for the cause of truth and
right; but it has also done bad work for the cause of falsehood and
wrong: for evil has its grit as well as virtue. As it lacks, suppresses,
or subordinates imagination, it is shorn of an important portion of a
complete manhood; for it not only loses the perception of beauty, but
the power of passing into other minds. It never takes the point of view
of the persons it o