ht. The Hero
taken as Divinity; the Hero taken as Prophet; then next the Hero taken
only as Poet: does it not look as if our estimate of the Great Man,
epoch after epoch, were continually diminishing? We take him first for
a god, then for one god-inspired; and now in the next stage of it, his
most miraculous word gains from us only the recognition that he is a
Poet, beautiful verse-maker, man of genius, or such like!--It looks so;
but I persuade myself that intrinsically it is not so. If we consider
well, it will perhaps appear that in man still there is the _same_
altogether peculiar admiration for the Heroic Gift, by what name soever
called, that there at any time was.

I should say, if we do not now reckon a Great Man literally divine,
it is that our notions of God, of the supreme unattainable Fountain of
Splendor, Wisdom and Heroism, are ever rising _higher_; not altogether
that our reverence for these qualities, as manifested in our like, is
getting lower. This is worth taking thought of. Sceptical Dilettantism,
the curse of these ages, a curse which will not last forever, does
indeed in this the highest province of human things, as in all
provinces, make sad work; and our reverence for great men, all
crippled, blinded, paralytic as it is, comes out in poor plight, hardly
recognizable. Men worship the shows of great men; the most disbelieve
that there is any reality of great men to worship. The dreariest,
fatalest faith; believing which, one would literally despair of
human things. Nevertheless look, for example, at Napoleon! A Corsican
lieutenant of artillery; that is the show of _him_: yet is he not
obeyed, worshipped after his sort, as all the Tiaraed and Diademed of
the world put together could not be? High Duchesses, and ostlers of
inns, gather round the Scottish rustic, Burns;--a strange feeling
dwelling in each that they never heard a man like this; that, on the
whole, this is the man! In the secret heart of these people it still
dimly reveals itself, though there is no accredited way of uttering
it at present, that this rustic, with his black brows and flashing
sun-eyes, and strange words moving laughter and tears, is of a dignity
far beyond all others, incommensurable with all others. Do not we feel
it so? But now, were Dilettantism, Scepticism, Triviality, and all that
sorrowful brood, cast out of us,--as, by God's blessing, they shall one
day be; were faith in the shows of things entirely swept out, repl