indomitable man of granite--was doing more work, and doing it more
thoroughly, than any living politician, but he was certainly not of the
mythological brotherhood who inhabit the serene regions of space beyond
the moon. He was not the son of god or goddess, destined, after removal
from this sphere, to shine with planetary lustre, among other
constellations, upon the scenes of mortal action. Those of us who are
willing to rise-or to descend if the phrase seems wiser--to the idea of
a self-governing people must content ourselves, for this epoch, with the
fancy of a hero-people and a people-king.

A plain little republic, thrusting itself uninvited into the great
political family-party of heaven-anointed sovereigns and long-descended
nobles, seemed a somewhat repulsive phenomenon. It became odious and
dangerous when by the blows it could deal in battle, the logic it could
chop in council, it indicated a remote future for the world, in which
right divine and regal paraphernalia might cease to be as effective
stage-properties as they had always been considered.

Yet it will be difficult for us to find the heroic individualised very
perceptibly at this period, look where we may. Already there seemed
ground for questioning the comfortable fiction that the accidentally
dominant families and castes were by nature wiser, better, braver than
that much-contemned entity, the People. What if the fearful heresy
should gain ground that the People was at least as wise, honest, and
brave as its masters? What if it should become a recognised fact that
the great individuals and castes, whose wealth and station furnished them
with ample time and means for perfecting themselves in the science of
government, were rather devoting their leisure to the systematic filling
of their own pockets than to the hiving up of knowledge for the good of
their fellow creatures? What if the whole theory of hereditary