s; could the cat speak, she would say that they have a genius
_only_ for lurking in holes. Bees and ants are, to say the least, quite
as witty as beetles, proverbially blind; yet they build insect cities,
and are as invincibly social and city-loving as Socrates himself.

Aside, however, from special eccentricity, there are men, like the Earl
of Essex, Bacon's _soi-disant_ friend, who possess a certain emphatic
and imposing individuality, which, while commonly assumed to indicate
character and force, is really but the _succedaneum_ for these. They
are like oysters, with extreme stress of shell, and only a blind, soft,
acephalous body within. These are commonly great men so long as little
men will serve; and are something less than little ever after. As an
instance of this, I should select the late chief magistrate of this
nation. His whole ability lay in putting a most imposing countenance
upon commonplaces. He made a mere _air_ seem solid as rock. Owing to
this possibility of presenting all force on the outside, and so creating
a false impression of resource, all great social emergencies are
followed by a speedy breaking down of men to whom was generally
attributed an able spirit; while others of less outward mark, and for
this reason hitherto unnoticed, come forward, and prove to be indeed the
large vessels of manhood accorded to that generation.

Our tendency to assume individual mark as the measure of personality
is flattered by many of the books we read. It is, of course, easier to
depict character, when it is accompanied by some striking individual
hue; and therefore in romances and novels this is conferred upon all the
forcible characters, merely to favor the author's hand: as microscopists
feed minute creatures with colored food to make their circulations
visible. It is only the great master who can represent a powerful
personality in the purest state, that is, with the maximum of character
and the minimum of individual distinction; while small artists, with a
feeble hold upon character, habitually resort to extreme quaintnesses
and singularities of circumstance, in order to confer upon their weak
portraitures some vigor of outline. It takes a Giotto to draw readily
a nearly perfect O; but a nearly perfect triangle any one can draw.
Shakspeare is able to delineate a Gentleman,--one, that is, who, while
nobly and profoundly a man, is so delicately individualized, that the
impression of him, however vigorous and co