So A GREAT PUBLIC CHARACTER. 



defiling into the plain large enough to contain sixty thou 

 sand men. The throne was situated on an eminence that 

 overlooked the plain, and Napoleon on several occasions 

 looked through a glass at Bolivar and his companions, who 

 were at the base of the hill. The hero Ca3sar could not 

 imagine he beheld the liberator of the world of Columbus ! &quot; 

 And small blame to him, one would say. We are not, 

 then, it seems, the only foundling of Columbus, as we are 

 so apt to take for granted. The great Genoese did not, as 

 we supposed, draw that first star-guided furrow across the 

 vague of waters with a single eye to the future greatness of 

 the United States. And have we not sometimes, like the 

 enthusiastic biographer, fancied the Old World staring 

 through all its telescopes at us, and wondered that it did 

 not recognise in us what we were fully persuaded we were 

 going to be and do 1 



Oar American life is dreadfully barren of those elements 

 of the social picturesque which give piquancy to anecdote. 

 And without anecdote, what is biography, or even history, 

 which is only biography on a larger scale ? Clio, though 

 she takes airs on herself, and pretend to be &quot; philosophy 

 teaching by example,&quot; is, after all, but a gossip who has 

 borrowed Fame s speaking-trumpet, and should be figured 

 with a tea-cup instead of a scroll in her hand. How much 

 has she not owed of late to the tittle-tattle of her gillflirt 

 sister Thalia ? In what gutters has not Macaulay raked 

 for the brilliant bits with which he has put together his 

 admirable mosaic picture of England under the last two 

 Stuarts 1 Even Mommsen himself, who dislikes Plutarch s 

 method as much as Montaigne loved it, cannot get or give a 

 lively notion of ancient Rome, without running to the 

 comic poets and the anecdote-mongers. He gives us the 

 very beef-tea of history, nourishing and even palatable 

 enough, excellently portable for a memory that must carry 

 her own packs, and can afford little luggage ; but for our 

 own part, we prefer a full, old-fashioned meal, with its side- 

 dishes of spicy gossip, and its last relish, the Stilton of scan 

 dal, so it be not too high. One volume of contemporary 



