accelerated or retarded. It is said that the triumph of Democracy is a
mere "matter of time." But time is in this case of the essence of the
matter, and the party of resistance will all the more earnestly maintain
that the defenders should hold the forts till the invaders have become
civilised. "The individual withers and the world is more and more,"
preludes, though over a long interval, the cynic comment of the second
"Locksley Hall" on the "increasing purpose" of the age. At an earlier
date "Luria" had protested against the arrogance of mere majorities.

A people is but the attempt of many
To rise to the completer life of one;
And those who live as models to the mass
Are singly of more value than they all.

Carlyle set these notes to Tennyson and to Browning in his
_Hero-Worship_--a creed, though in thought, and more in action, older
than Buddha or than Achilles, which he first launched as a dogma on our
times, clenching it with the asseveration that on two men, Mirabeau
and Napoleon, mainly hung the fates of the most nominally levelling of
Revolutions. The stamp his teaching made remains marked on the minds of
the men of light who _lead_, and cannot be wholly effaced by the clamour
of the men of words who _orate_. If he leans unduly to the exaltation
of personal power, Carlyle is on the side of those whose defeat can be
beneficent only if it be slow. Further to account for his attitude,
we must refer to his life and to its surroundings, _i.e._ to the
circumstances amid which he was "evolved."