eet fragrance around, and filling the beholder with rapturous delight.

History exhibits to us many men of commanding and comprehensive genius,
who stand at the head of their age and nation, and furnish material for
the intellectual activity of whole generations and periods, until they
are succeeded by other heroes at a new epoch of development. As rivers
generally spring from high mountains, so knowledge and moral power rises
and is ever nourished from the heights of humanity. Abraham, the father
of the faithful; Moses, the lawgiver of the Jewish theocracy; Elijah,
among the prophets; Peter, Paul, and John among the apostles; Athanasius
and Chrysostom among the Greek, Augustine and Jerome among the Latin
fathers; Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus among the schoolmen; Leo I. and
Gregory VII. among the popes; Luther and Calvin in the line of
Protestant reformers and divines; Socrates, the patriarch of the
ancient schools of philosophy; Homer, Dante, Shakspeare, and Milton,
Goethe and Schiller in the history of poetry, among the various nations
to which they belong; Raphael among painters; Charlemagne, the first and
greatest in the long succession of German emperors; Napoleon, towering
high above all the generals of his training; Washington, the wisest and
best as well as the first of American presidents, and the purest and
noblest type of the American character, may be mentioned as examples of
those representative heroes in history who anticipate and concentrate
the powers of whole generations. But they never represent universal, but
only sectional humanity; they are identified with a particular people or
age, and partake of its errors, superstitions, and failings, almost in
the same proportion in which they exhibit its virtues. Moses, though
revered by the followers of three religions, was a Jew in views,
feelings, habits, and position, as well as by parentage; Socrates never
rose above the Greek type of character; Luther was a German in all his
virtues and faults, and can only be properly understood as a German;
Calvin, though an exile from his native land, remained a Frenchman; and
Washington can be to no nation on earth what he is to the American.
Their influence may and does extend far beyond their respective national
horizons, yet they can never furnish a universal model for imitation. We
regard them as extraordinary but fallible and imperfect men, whom it
would be very unsafe to follow in every view and line of conduct