

68 A GREAT PUBLIC CHARACTER. 



improvement, let us say, match with these, or with far lesser 

 than these ? Perhaps he was more practically useful than 

 any one of these, or all of them together, but the soul is sen 

 sible of a sad difference somewhere. These also were citi 

 zens of a provincial capital; so were the greater part of 

 Plutarch s heroes. Did they have a better chance than 

 we moderns than we Americans ? At any rate they have 

 the start of us, and we must confess that 



By bed and table they lord it o er us, 

 Our elder brothers, but one in blood. 



Yes, one in blood ; that is the hardest part of it. Is our pro 

 vincialism then in some great measure due to our absorption 

 in the practical, as we politely call it, meaning the material 

 to our habit of estimating greatness by the square mile 

 and the hundredweight? Even during our war, in the midst 

 of that almost unrivalled stress of soul, were not our speakers 

 and newspapers so enslaved to the vulgar habit as to boast 

 ten times of the thousands of square miles it covered with 

 armed men, for once that they alluded to the motive that 

 gave it all its meaning and its splendour ? Perhaps it was as 

 well that they did not exploit that passion of patriotism as 

 an advertisement in the style of Barnum or Perham. I 

 scale one hundred and eighty pounds, but when I m mad I 

 weigh two ton, said the Kentuckian, with a true notion of 

 moral avoirdupois. That ideal kind of weight is wonderfully 

 increased by a national feeling, whereby one man is con 

 scious that thirty millions of men go into the balance with 

 him. The Roman in ancient, and the Englishman in modern 

 times, have been most conscious of this representative soli 

 dity, and wherever one of them went there stood Rome or 

 England in his shoes. We have made some advance in thej 

 right direction. Our civil war, by the breadth of its propor 

 tions and the implacability of its demands, forced us to admit 

 a truer valuation, and gave us, in our own despite, great; 

 soldiers and sailors, allowed for such by all the world. The 

 harder problems it has left behind may in time compel us to, 

 have great statesmen, with views capable of reaching beyond 

 the next election. The criticism of Europe alone can rescue 

 us from the provincialism of an over or false estimate of our 

 selves. Let us be thankful, and not angry, that we must 

 accept it as our touchstone. Our stamp has so often been 

 impressed upon base metal, that we cannot expect it to bej 



