any elect spirit did, inures to the credit of us all. A fragment of
Lowell's clarion verse may stand for the biography of heroism:

"When a deed is done for Freedom, through the broad
earth's aching breast
Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on from east
to west;
And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels the soul within
him climb
To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy sublime
Of a century bursts full-blossomed on the thorny stem
of Time;"

such being the undeniable result and history of any heroic service.

But the world's hero has changed. The old hero was Ulysses, or
Achilles, or Aeneas. The hero of Greek literature is Ulysses, as
Aeneas is in Latin literature. But to our modern thought these heroes
miss of being heroic. We have outgrown them as we have outgrown dolls
and marbles. To be frank, we do not admire Aeneas nor Ulysses. Aeneas
wept too often and too copiously. He impresses us as a big cry-baby.
Of this trinity of classic heroes--Ulysses, Aeneas, and
Achilles--Ulysses is least obnoxious. This statement is cold and
unsatisfactory, and apparently unappreciative, but it is candid and
just. Lodge, in his "Some Accepted Heroes," has done service in
rubbing the gilding from Achilles, and showing that he was gaudy and
cheap. We thought the image was gold, which was, in fact, thin gilt.
Achilles sulks in his tent, while Greek armies are thrown back defeated
from the Trojan gates. In nothing is he admirable save that, when his
pouting fit is over and when he rushes into the battle, he has might,
and overbears the force opposing him as a wave does some petty
obstacle. But no higher quality shines in his conquest. He is vain,
brutal, and impervious to high motive. In Aeneas one can find little
attractive save his filial regard. He bears Anchises on his shoulders
from toppling Troy; but his wanderings constitute an Odyssey of
commonplaces, or chance, or meanness. No one can doubt Virgil meant to
create a hero of commanding proportions, though we, looking at him from
this far remove, find him uninteresting, unheroic, and vulgar; and why
the goddess should put herself out to allay tempests in his behalf, or
why hostile deities should be disturbed to tumble seas into turbulence
for such a voyager, is a query. He merits neither their wrath nor
their courtesy. I confess to liking heroes of the old Norse mythology
better. They, at least, did not cry nor