n, if not through very Chaos and the
Abyss! The resuscitating of a soul that has gone to asphyxia is
no momentary or pleasant process, but a long and terrible one.

To the present Editor 'Hero-worship,' as he has elsewhere named
it, means much more than an elected Parliament, or stated
Aristocracy, of the Wisest; for, in his dialect, it is the
summary, ultimate essence, and supreme practical perfection of
all manner of 'worship,' and true worships and noblenesses
whatsoever. Such blessed Parliament and, were it once in
perfection, blessed Aristocracy of the Wisest, god-honoured and
man-honoured, he does look for, more and more perfected,--as the
topmost blessed practical apex of a whole world reformed from
sham-worship, informed anew with worship, with truth and
blessedness! He thinks that Hero-worship, done differently in
every different epoch of the world, is the soul of all social
business among men; that the doing of it well, or the doing of
it ill, measures accurately what degree of well-being or of ill-
being there is in the world's affairs. He thinks that we, on the
whole, do our Hero-worship worse than any Nation in this world
ever did it before: that the Burns an Exciseman, the Byron a
Literary Lion, are intrinsically, all things considered, a baser
and falser phenomenon than the Odin a God, the Mahomet a Prophet
of God. It is this Editor's clear opinion, accordingly, that we
must learn to do our Hero-worship better; that to do it better
and better, means the awakening of the Nation's soul from its
asphyxia, and the return of blessed life to us,--Heaven's blessed
life, not Mammon's galvanic accursed one. To resuscitate the
Asphyxied, apparently now moribund, and in the last agony if not
resuscitated: such and no other seems the consummation.

'Hero-worship,' if you will,--yes, friends; but, first of all,
by being ourselves of heroic mind. A whole world of Heroes; a
world not of Flunkeys, where no Hero-King _can_ reign: that is
what we aim at! We, for our share, will put away all Flunkeyism,
Baseness, Unveracity from us; we shall then hope to have
Noblenesses and Veracities set over us; never till then. Let
Bobus and Company sneer, "That is your Reform!" Yes, Bobus, that
is our Reform; and except in that, and what will follow out of
that, we have no hope at all. Reform, like Charity, O Bobus,
must begin at home. Once well at home, how will it radiate
outwards, irrepressible, into a