A SUNDAY IN CHEYNE ROW 263 



missed the road, — at times groping about sorrow- 

 fully, anon desperately hewing his way through 

 all manner of obstructions. He presents the sin- 

 gular anomaly of a great man, of a towering and 

 unique genius, such as appears at intervals of cen- 

 turies, who was not in any sense representative, 

 who had no precursors and who left no followers, — 

 a man isolated, exceptional, towering like a solitary 

 peak or cone set over against the main ranges. He 

 is in line with none of the great men, or small 

 men, of his age and country. His message is unwel- 

 come to them. He is an enormous reaction or 

 rebound from the all-leveling tendencies of demo- 

 cracy. No wonder he thought himself the most 

 solitary man in the world, and bewailed his loneli- 

 ness continually. He was the most solitary. Of 

 all the great men his race and country have pro- 

 duced, none, perhaps, were quite so isolated and 

 set apart as he. None shared so little the life and 

 aspirations of their countrymen, or were so little 

 sustained by the spirit of their age. The literature, 

 the religion, the science, the politics of his times 

 were alike hateful to him. His spirit was as lonely 

 as a "peak in Darien." He felt himself on a nar- 

 row isthmus of time, confronted by two eternities, 

 — the eternity past and the eternity to come. 

 Daily and hourly he felt the abysmal solitude that 

 surrounded him. Endowed with the richest fund 

 of sympathy, and yet sympathizing with so little; 

 burdened with solicitude for the public weal, and 

 yet in no vital or intimate relation with the public 



