A SUNDAY IN CHEYNE ROW. 283 



was an original source and came from out the depths, 

 at times from out the Plutonic depths. 



He bewails his gloom and loneliness, and the isola- 

 tion of his soul in the paths in which he was called 

 to walk. In many ways he was an exile, a wanderer, 

 forlorn or uncertain, like one who had missed the 

 road, at times groping about sorrowfully, anon, 

 desperately hewing his way through all manner of 

 obstructions. He presents the singular anomaly of a 

 great man, of a towering and unique genius, such as 

 appears at intervals of centuries, who was not in any 

 sense representative, who had no precursors and who 

 left no followers, a man isolated, exceptional, tower- 

 ing 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 unwelcome to them. He is an enormous 

 reaction or rebound from the all-leveling tendencies 

 of democracy. No wonder he thought himself the 

 most solitary man in the world, and bewailed his 

 loneliness 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 aspi- 

 rations of their countrymen, or were so little sustained 

 by the spirit of their age. The literature, the relig- 

 ion, 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 narrow isthmus of 

 time, confronted by two eternities, the eternity past 



