I should say, if we do not now reckon a Great Man literally divine, it is
that our notions of God, of the supreme unattainable Fountain of Splendor,
Wisdom and Heroism, are ever rising _higher_; not altogether that our
reverence for these qualities, as manifested in our like, is getting lower.
This is worth taking thought of. Sceptical Dilettantism, the curse of
these ages, a curse which will not last forever, does indeed in this the
highest province of human things, as in all provinces, make sad work; and
our reverence for great men, all crippled, blinded, paralytic as it is,
comes out in poor plight, hardly recognizable. Men worship the shows of
great men; the most disbelieve that there is any reality of great men to
worship. The dreariest, fatalest faith; believing which, one would
literally despair of human things. Nevertheless look, for example, at
Napoleon! A Corsican lieutenant of artillery; that is the show of _him_:
yet is he not obeyed, worshipped after his sort, as all the Tiaraed and
Diademed of the world put together could not be? High Duchesses, and
ostlers of inns, gather round the Scottish rustic, Burns;--a strange
feeling dwelling in each that they never heard a man like this; that, on
the whole, this is the man! In the secret heart of these people it still
dimly reveals itself, though there is no accredited way of uttering it at
present, that this rustic, with his black brows and flashing sun-eyes, and
strange words moving laughter and tears, is of a dignity far beyond all
others, incommensurable with all others. Do not we feel it so? But now,
were Dilettantism, Scepticism, Triviality, and all that sorrowful brood,
cast out of us,--as, by God's blessing, they shall one day be; were faith
in the shows of things entirely swept out, replaced by clear faith in the
_things_, so that a man acted on the impulse of that only, and counted the
other non-extant; what a new livelier feeling towards this Burns were it!

Nay here in these ages, such as they are, have we not two mere Poets, if
not deified, yet we may say beatified? Shakspeare and Dante are Saints of