268 A SUNDAY IN CHEYNE ROW. 



a nation and I care not who makes the laws ? " Cer- 

 tainly the great poet of a people is its real Founder 

 and King. He rules for centuries and rules in the 

 heart. 



In more primitive times, and amid more rudely 

 organized communities, the hero, the strong man, 

 could step to the front and seize the leadership like 

 the buffalo of the plains or the wild horse of the 

 pampas ; but in our time, at least among English- 

 speaking races, he must be more or less called by 

 the suffrage of the people. It is quite certain that 

 had there been a seventeenth or eighteenth century 

 Carlyle he would not have seen the hero in Crom- 

 well, or in Frederick, that the nineteenth century 

 Carlyle saw in each. In any case, in any event, the 

 dead rule us more than the living ; we cannot escape 

 the past. It is not merely by virtue of. the sunlight 

 that falls now, and the rain and dew that it brings, 

 that we continue here ; but by virtue of the sunlight 

 of aeons of past ages. 



" This land of England has its conquerors, posses- 

 sors, which change from epoch to epoch, from day to 

 day ; but its real conquerors, creators, and eternal 

 proprietors are these following and their representa- 

 tives, if you can find them : all the Heroic Souls that 

 ever were in England, each in their degree ; all the 

 men that ever cut a thistle, drained a puddle out of 

 England, contrived a wise scheme in England, did or 

 said a true and valiant thing in England." " Work ? 

 The quantity of done and forgotten work that lies 



