We come now to the last form of Heroism1; that which we call Kingship. The Commander over Men; he to whose will our wills are to be subordinated, and loyally surrender themselves, and find their welfare in doing so, may be reckoned the most important of Great Men. He is practically the summary for us of all the various figures of Heroism; Priest, Teacher, whatsoever2 of earthly or of spiritual dignity we can fancy to reside in a man, embodies3 itself here, to command over us, to furnish us with constant practical teaching, to tell us for the day and hour what we are to do. He is called Rex, Regulator, Roi: our own name is still better; King, Konning, which means Can-ning, Able-man.
Numerous considerations, pointing towards deep, questionable5, and indeed unfathomable regions, present themselves here: on the most of which we must resolutely7 for the present forbear to speak at all. As Burke said that perhaps fair Trial by Jury was the soul of Government, and that all legislation, administration, parliamentary debating, and the rest of it, went on, in “order to bring twelve impartial8 men into a jury-box;" — so, by much stronger reason, may I say here, that the finding of your Ableman and getting him invested with the symbols of ability, with dignity, worship (worth-ship), royalty9, kinghood, or whatever we call it, so that he may actually have room to guide according to his faculty10 of doing it, — is the business, well or ill accomplished11, of all social procedure whatsoever in this world! Hustings-speeches, Parliamentary motions, Reform Bills, French Revolutions, all mean at heart this; or else nothing. Find in any country the Ablest Man that exists there; raise him to the supreme12 place, and loyally reverence13 him: you have a perfect government for that country; no ballot-box, parliamentary eloquence14, voting, constitution-building, or other machinery15 whatsoever can improve it a whit16. It is in the perfect state; an ideal country. The Ablest Man; he means also the truest-hearted, justest, the Noblest Man: what he tells us to do must be precisely17 the wisest, fittest, that we could anywhere or anyhow learn; — the thing which it will in all ways behoove18 US, with right loyal thankfulness and nothing doubting, to do! Our doing and life were then, so far as government could regulate it, well regulated; that were the ideal of constitutions.
Alas19, we know very well that Ideals can never be completely embodied20 in practice. Ideals must ever lie a very great way off; and we will right thankfully content ourselves with any not intolerable approximation thereto! Let no man, as Schiller says, too querulously “measure by a scale of perfection the meagre product of reality” in this poor world of ours. We will esteem22 him no wise man; we will esteem him a sickly, discontented, foolish man. And yet, on the other hand, it is never to be forgotten that Ideals do exist; that if they be not approximated to at all, the whole matter goes to wreck23! Infallibly. No bricklayer builds a wall perfectly24 perpendicular25, mathematically this is not possible; a certain degree of perpendicularity26 suffices him; and he, like a good bricklayer, who must have done with his job, leaves it so. And yet if he sway too much from the perpendicular; above all, if he throw plummet27 and level quite away from him, and pile brick on brick heedless, just as it comes to hand —! Such bricklayer, I think, is in a bad way. He has forgotten himself: but the Law of Gravitation does not forget to act on him; he and his wall rush down into confused welter of ruin —!
This is the history of all rebellions, French Revolutions, social explosions in ancient or modern times. You have put the too Unable Man at the head of affairs! The too ignoble28, unvaliant, fatuous29 man. You have forgotten that there is any rule, or natural necessity whatever, of putting the Able Man there. Brick must lie on brick as it may and can. Unable Simulacrum of Ability, quack30, in a word, must adjust himself with quack, in all manner of administration of human things; — which accordingly lie unadministered, fermenting31 into unmeasured masses of failure, of indigent32 misery33: in the outward, and in the inward or spiritual, miserable34 millions stretch out the hand for their due supply, and it is not there. The “law of gravitation” acts; Nature’s laws do none of them forget to act. The miserable millions burst forth35 into Sansculottism, or some other sort of madness: bricks and bricklayer lie as a fatal chaos36 —!
Much sorry stuff, written some hundred years ago or more, about the “Divine right of Kings,” moulders37 unread now in the Public Libraries of this country. Far be it from us to disturb the calm process by which it is disappearing harmlessly from the earth, in those repositories! At the same time, not to let the immense rubbish go without leaving us, as it ought, some soul of it behind — I will say that it did mean something; something true, which it is important for us and all men to keep in mind. To assert that in whatever man you chose to lay hold of (by this or the other plan of clutching at him); and claps a round piece of metal on the head of, and called King, — there straightway came to reside a divine virtue38, so that he became a kind of god, and a Divinity inspired him with faculty and right to rule over you to all lengths: this, — what can we do with this but leave it to rot silently in the Public Libraries? But I will say withal, and that is what these Divine-right men meant, That in Kings, and in all human Authorities, and relations that men god-created can form among each other, there is verily either a Divine Right or else a Diabolic Wrong; one or the other of these two! For it is false altogether, what the last Sceptical Century taught us, that this world is a steam-engine. There is a God in this world; and a God’s-sanction, or else the violation39 of such, does look out from all ruling and obedience40, from all moral acts of men. There is no act more moral between men than that of rule and obedience. Woe41 to him that claims obedience when it is not due; woe to him that refuses it when it is! God’s law is in that, I say, however the Parchment-laws may run: there is a Divine Right or else a Diabolic Wrong at the heart of every claim that one man makes upon another.
It can do none of us harm to reflect on this: in all the relations of life it will concern us; in Loyalty42 and Royalty, the highest of these. I esteem the modern error, That all goes by self-interest and the checking and balancing of greedy knaveries44, and that in short, there is nothing divine whatever in the association of men, a still more despicable error, natural as it is to an unbelieving century, than that of a “divine right” in people called Kings. I say, Find me the true Konning, King, or Able-man, and he has a divine right over me. That we knew in some tolerable measure how to find him, and that all men were ready to acknowledge his divine right when found: this is precisely the healing which a sick world is everywhere, in these ages, seeking after! The true King, as guide of the practical, has ever something of the Pontiff in him, — guide of the spiritual, from which all practice has its rise. This too is a true saying, That the King is head of the Church. — But we will leave the Polemic45 stuff of a dead century to lie quiet on its bookshelves.
Certainly it is a fearful business, that of having your Ableman to seek, and not knowing in what manner to proceed about it! That is the world’s sad predicament in these times of ours. They are times of revolution, and have long been. The bricklayer with his bricks, no longer heedful of plummet or the law of gravitation, have toppled, tumbled, and it all welters as we see! But the beginning of it was not the French Revolution; that is rather the end, we can hope. It were truer to say, the beginning was three centuries farther back: in the Reformation of Luther. That the thing which still called itself Christian46 Church had become a Falsehood, and brazenly47 went about pretending to pardon men’s sins for metallic48 coined money, and to do much else which in the everlasting49 truth of Nature it did not now do: here lay the vital malady50. The inward being wrong, all outward went ever more and more wrong. Belief died away; all was Doubt, Disbelief. The builder cast away his plummet; said to himself, “What is gravitation? Brick lies on brick there!” Alas, does it not still sound strange to many of us, the assertion that there is a God’s-truth in the business of god-created men; that all is not a kind of grimace51, an “expediency52,” diplomacy53, one knows not what —!
From that first necessary assertion of Luther’s, “You, self-styled Papa, you are no Father in God at all; you are — a Chimera54, whom I know not how to name in polite language!” — from that onwards to the shout which rose round Camille Desmoulins in the Palais–Royal, “Aux armes!” when the people had burst up against all manner of Chimeras55, — I find a natural historical sequence. That shout too, so frightful56, half-infernal, was a great matter. Once more the voice of awakened57 nations; — starting confusedly, as out of nightmare, as out of death-sleep, into some dim feeling that Life was real; that God’s-world was not an expediency and diplomacy! Infernal; — yes, since they would not have it otherwise. Infernal, since not celestial58 or terrestrial! Hollowness, insincerity has to cease; sincerity59 of some sort has to begin. Cost what it may, reigns60 of terror, horrors of French Revolution or what else, we have to return to truth. Here is a Truth, as I said: a Truth clad in hell-fire, since they would not but have it so —!
A common theory among considerable parties of men in England and elsewhere used to be, that the French Nation had, in those days, as it were gone mad; that the French Revolution was a general act of insanity61, a temporary conversion62 of France and large sections of the world into a kind of Bedlam64. The Event had risen and raged; but was a madness and nonentity65, — gone now happily into the region of Dreams and the Picturesque66! — To such comfortable philosophers, the Three Days of July, 1830, must have been a surprising phenomenon. Here is the French Nation risen again, in musketry and death-struggle, out shooting and being shot, to make that same mad French Revolution good! The sons and grandsons of those men, it would seem, persist in the enterprise: they do not disown it; they will have it made good; will have themselves shot, if it be not made good. To philosophers who had made up their life-system, on that “madness” quietus, no phenomenon could be more alarming. Poor Niebuhr, they say, the Prussian Professor and Historian, fell broken-hearted in consequence; sickened, if we can believe it, and died of the Three Days! It was surely not a very heroic death; — little better than Racine’s, dying because Louis Fourteenth looked sternly on him once. The world had stood some considerable shocks, in its time; might have been expected to survive the Three Days too, and be found turning on its axis67 after even them! The Three Days told all mortals that the old French Revolution, mad as it might look, was not a transitory ebullition of Bedlam, but a genuine product of this Earth where we all live; that it was verily a Fact, and that the world in general would do well everywhere to regard it as such.
Truly, without the French Revolution, one would not know what to make of an age like this at all. We will hail the French Revolution, as shipwrecked mariners68 might the sternest rock, in a world otherwise all of baseless sea and waves. A true Apocalypse, though a terrible one, to this false withered70 artificial time; testifying once more that Nature is preternatural; if not divine, then diabolic; that Semblance71 is not Reality; that it has to become Reality, or the world will take fire under it, — burn it into what it is, namely Nothing! Plausibility72 has ended; empty Routine has ended; much has ended. This, as with a Trump73 of Doom74, has been proclaimed to all men. They are the wisest who will learn it soonest. Long confused generations before it be learned; peace impossible till it be! The earnest man, surrounded, as ever, with a world of inconsistencies, can await patiently, patiently strive to do his work, in the midst of that. Sentence of Death is written down in Heaven against all that; sentence of Death is now proclaimed on the Earth against it: this he with his eyes may see. And surely, I should say, considering the other side of the matter, what enormous difficulties lie there, and how fast, fearfully fast, in all countries, the inexorable demand for solution of them is pressing on, — he may easily find other work to do than laboring75 in the Sansculottic province at this time of day!
To me, in these circumstances, that of “Hero-worship” becomes a fact inexpressibly precious; the most solacing77 fact one sees in the world at present. There is an everlasting hope in it for the management of the world. Had all traditions, arrangements, creeds78, societies that men ever instituted, sunk away, this would remain. The certainty of Heroes being sent us; our faculty, our necessity, to reverence Heroes when sent: it shines like a polestar through smoke-clouds, dust-clouds, and all manner of down-rushing and conflagration79.
Hero-worship would have sounded very strange to those workers and fighters in the French Revolution. Not reverence for Great Men; not any hope or belief, or even wish, that Great Men could again appear in the world! Nature, turned into a “Machine,” was as if effete80 now; could not any longer produce Great Men:— I can tell her, she may give up the trade altogether, then; we cannot do without Great Men! — But neither have I any quarrel with that of “Liberty and Equality;” with the faith that, wise great men being impossible, a level immensity of foolish small men would suffice. It was a natural faith then and there. “Liberty and Equality; no Authority needed any longer. Hero-worship, reverence for such Authorities, has proved false, is itself a falsehood; no more of it! We have had such forgeries81, we will now trust nothing. So many base plated coins passing in the market, the belief has now become common that no gold any longer exists, — and even that we can do very well without gold!” I find this, among other things, in that universal cry of Liberty and Equality; and find it very natural, as matters then stood.
And yet surely it is but the transition from false to true. Considered as the whole truth, it is false altogether; — the product of entire sceptical blindness, as yet only struggling to see. Hero-worship exists forever, and everywhere: not Loyalty alone; it extends from divine adoration82 down to the lowest practical regions of life. “Bending before men,” if it is not to be a mere83 empty grimace, better dispensed84 with than practiced, is Hero-worship, — a recognition that there does dwell in that presence of our brother something divine; that every created man, as Novalis said, is a “revelation in the Flesh.” They were Poets too, that devised all those graceful85 courtesies which make life noble! Courtesy is not a falsehood or grimace; it need not be such. And Loyalty, religious Worship itself, are still possible; nay86 still inevitable87.
May we not say, moreover, while so many of our late Heroes have worked rather as revolutionary men, that nevertheless every Great Man, every genuine man, is by the nature of him a son of Order, not of Disorder88? It is a tragical89 position for a true man to work in revolutions. He seems an anarchist90; and indeed a painful element of anarchy91 does encumber92 him at every step, — him to whose whole soul anarchy is hostile, hateful. His mission is Order; every man’s is. He is here to make what was disorderly, chaotic93, into a thing ruled, regular. He is the missionary94 of Order. Is not all work of man in this world a making of Order? The carpenter finds rough trees; shapes them, constrains95 them into square fitness, into purpose and use. We are all born enemies of Disorder: it is tragical for us all to be concerned in image-breaking and down-pulling; for the Great Man, more a man than we, it is doubly tragical.
Thus too all human things, maddest French Sansculottisms, do and must work towards Order. I say, there is not a man in them, raging in the thickest of the madness, but is impelled96 withal, at all moments, towards Order. His very life means that; Disorder is dissolution, death. No chaos but it seeks a centre to revolve97 round. While man is man, some Cromwell or Napoleon is the necessary finish of a Sansculottism. — Curious: in those days when Hero-worship was the most incredible thing to every one, how it does come out nevertheless, and assert itself practically, in a way which all have to credit. Divine right, take it on the great scale, is found to mean divine might withal! While old false Formulas are getting trampled98 everywhere into destruction, new genuine Substances unexpectedly unfold themselves indestructible. In rebellious99 ages, when Kingship itself seems dead and abolished, Cromwell, Napoleon step forth again as Kings. The history of these men is what we have now to look at, as our last phasis of Heroism. The old ages are brought back to us; the manner in which Kings were made, and Kingship itself first took rise, is again exhibited in the history of these Two.
We have had many civil wars in England; wars of Red and White Roses, wars of Simon de Montfort; wars enough, which are not very memorable100. But that war of the Puritans has a significance which belongs to no one of the others. Trusting to your candor101, which will suggest on the other side what I have not room to say, I will call it a section once more of that great universal war which alone makes up the true History of the World, — the war of Belief against Unbelief! The struggle of men intent on the real essence of things, against men intent on the semblances102 and forms of things. The Puritans, to many, seem mere savage103 Iconoclasts104, fierce destroyers of Forms; but it were more just to call them haters of untrue Forms. I hope we know how to respect Laud105 and his King as well as them. Poor Laud seems to me to have been weak and ill-starred, not dishonest an unfortunate Pedant106 rather than anything worse. His “Dreams” and superstitions107, at which they laugh so, have an affectionate, lovable kind of character. He is like a College–Tutor, whose whole world is forms, College-rules; whose notion is that these are the life and safety of the world. He is placed suddenly, with that unalterable luckless notion of his, at the head not of a College but of a Nation, to regulate the most complex deep-reaching interests of men. He thinks they ought to go by the old decent regulations; nay that their salvation109 will lie in extending and improving these. Like a weak man, he drives with spasmodic vehemence110 towards his purpose; cramps111 himself to it, heeding112 no voice of prudence113, no cry of pity: He will have his College-rules obeyed by his Collegians; that first; and till that, nothing. He is an ill-starred Pedant, as I said. He would have it the world was a College of that kind, and the world was not that. Alas, was not his doom stern enough? Whatever wrongs he did, were they not all frightfully avenged114 on him?
It is meritorious115 to insist on forms; Religion and all else naturally clothes itself in forms. Everywhere the formed world is the only habitable one. The naked formlessness of Puritanism is not the thing I praise in the Puritans; it is the thing I pity, — praising only the spirit which had rendered that inevitable! All substances clothe themselves in forms: but there are suitable true forms, and then there are untrue unsuitable. As the briefest definition, one might say, Forms which grow round a substance, if we rightly understand that, will correspond to the real nature and purport116 of it, will be true, good; forms which are consciously put round a substance, bad. I invite you to reflect on this. It distinguishes true from false in Ceremonial Form, earnest solemnity from empty pageant117, in all human things.
There must be a veracity118, a natural spontaneity in forms. In the commonest meeting of men, a person making, what we call, “set speeches,” is not he an offence? In the mere drawing-room, whatsoever courtesies you see to be grimaces119, prompted by no spontaneous reality within, are a thing you wish to get away from. But suppose now it were some matter of vital concernment, some transcendent matter (as Divine Worship is), about which your whole soul, struck dumb with its excess of feeling, knew not how to form itself into utterance120 at all, and preferred formless silence to any utterance there possible, — what should we say of a man coming forward to represent or utter it for you in the way of upholsterer-mummery? Such a man, — let him depart swiftly, if he love himself! You have lost your only son; are mute, struck down, without even tears: an importunate121 man importunately122 offers to celebrate Funeral Games for him in the manner of the Greeks! Such mummery is not only not to be accepted, — it is hateful, unendurable. It is what the old Prophets called “Idolatry,” worshipping of hollow shows; what all earnest men do and will reject. We can partly understand what those poor Puritans meant. Laud dedicating that St. Catherine Creed’s Church, in the manner we have it described; with his multiplied ceremonial bowings, gesticulations, exclamations123: surely it is rather the rigorous formal Pedant, intent on his “College-rules,” than the earnest Prophet intent on the essence of the matter!
Puritanism found such forms insupportable; trampled on such forms; — we have to excuse it for saying, No form at all rather than such! It stood preaching in its bare pulpit, with nothing but the Bible in its hand. Nay, a man preaching from his earnest soul into the earnest souls of men: is not this virtually the essence of all Churches whatsoever? The nakedest, savagest reality, I say, is preferable to any semblance, however dignified125. Besides, it will clothe itself with due semblance by and by, if it be real. No fear of that; actually no fear at all. Given the living man, there will be found clothes for him; he will find himself clothes. But the suit-of-clothes pretending that it is both clothes and man —! We cannot “fight the French” by three hundred thousand red uniforms; there must be men in the inside of them! Semblance, I assert, must actually not divorce itself from Reality. If Semblance do, — why then there must be men found to rebel against Semblance, for it has become a lie! These two Antagonisms126 at war here, in the case of Laud and the Puritans, are as old nearly as the world. They went to fierce battle over England in that age; and fought out their confused controversy127 to a certain length, with many results for all of us.
In the age which directly followed that of the Puritans, their cause or themselves were little likely to have justice done them. Charles Second and his Rochesters were not the kind of men you would set to judge what the worth or meaning of such men might have been. That there could be any faith or truth in the life of a man, was what these poor Rochesters, and the age they ushered128 in, had forgotten. Puritanism was hung on gibbets, — like the bones of the leading Puritans. Its work nevertheless went on accomplishing itself. All true work of a man, hang the author of it on what gibbet you like, must and will accomplish itself. We have our Habeas–Corpus, our free Representation of the People; acknowledgment, wide as the world, that all men are, or else must, shall, and will become, what we call free men; — men with their life grounded on reality and justice, not on tradition, which has become unjust and a chimera! This in part, and much besides this, was the work of the Puritans.
And indeed, as these things became gradually manifest, the character of the Puritans began to clear itself. Their memories were, one after another, taken down from the gibbet; nay a certain portion of them are now, in these days, as good as canonized. Eliot, Hampden, Pym, nay Ludlow, Hutchinson, Vane himself, are admitted to be a kind of Heroes; political Conscript Fathers, to whom in no small degree we owe what makes us a free England: it would not be safe for anybody to designate these men as wicked now. Few Puritans of note but find their apologists somewhere, and have a certain reverence paid them by earnest men. One Puritan, I think, and almost he alone, our poor Cromwell, seems to hang yet on the gibbet, and find no hearty129 apologist anywhere. Him neither saint nor sinner will acquit130 of great wickedness. A man of ability, infinite talent, courage, and so forth: but he betrayed the Cause. Selfish ambition, dishonesty, duplicity; a fierce, coarse, hypocritical Tartuffe; turning all that noble Struggle for constitutional Liberty into a sorry farce131 played for his own benefit: this and worse is the character they give of Cromwell. And then there come contrasts with Washington and others; above all, with these noble Pyms and Hampdens, whose noble work he stole for himself, and ruined into a futility132 and deformity.
This view of Cromwell seems to me the not unnatural133 product of a century like the Eighteenth. As we said of the Valet, so of the Sceptic: He does not know a Hero when he sees him! The Valet expected purple mantles134, gilt135 sceptres, bodyguards136 and flourishes of trumpets137: the Sceptic of the Eighteenth century looks for regulated respectable Formulas, “Principles,” or what else he may call them; a style of speech and conduct which has got to seem “respectable,” which can plead for itself in a handsome articulate manner, and gain the suffrages139 of an enlightened sceptical Eighteenth century! It is, at bottom, the same thing that both the Valet and he expect: the garnitures of some acknowledged royalty, which then they will acknowledge! The King coming to them in the rugged140 unformulistic state shall be no King.
For my own share, far be it from me to say or insinuate141 a word of disparagement142 against such characters as Hampden, Elliot, Pym; whom I believe to have been right worthy143 and useful men. I have read diligently144 what books and documents about them I could come at; — with the honestest wish to admire, to love and worship them like Heroes; but I am sorry to say, if the real truth must be told, with very indifferent success! At bottom, I found that it would not do. They are very noble men, these; step along in their stately way, with their measured euphemisms146, philosophies, parliamentary eloquences, Ship-moneys, Monarchies147 of Man; a most constitutional, unblamable, dignified set of men. But the heart remains148 cold before them; the fancy alone endeavors to get up some worship of them. What man’s heart does, in reality, break forth into any fire of brotherly love for these men? They are become dreadfully dull men! One breaks down often enough in the constitutional eloquence of the admirable Pym, with his “seventhly and lastly.” You find that it may be the admirablest thing in the world, but that it is heavy, — heavy as lead, barren as brick-clay; that, in a word, for you there is little or nothing now surviving there! One leaves all these Nobilities standing149 in their niches150 of honor: the rugged outcast Cromwell, he is the man of them all in whom one still finds human stuff. The great savage Baresark: he could write no euphemistic Monarchy151 of Man; did not speak, did not work with glib152 regularity153; had no straight story to tell for himself anywhere. But he stood bare, not cased in euphemistic coat-of-mail; he grappled like a giant, face to face, heart to heart, with the naked truth of things! That, after all, is the sort of man for one. I plead guilty to valuing such a man beyond all other sorts of men. Smooth-shaven Respectabilities not a few one finds, that are not good for much. Small thanks to a man for keeping his hands clean, who would not touch the work but with gloves on!
Neither, on the whole, does this constitutional tolerance154 of the Eighteenth century for the other happier Puritans seem to be a very great matter. One might say, it is but a piece of Formulism and Scepticism, like the rest. They tell us, It was a sorrowful thing to consider that the foundation of our English Liberties should have been laid by “Superstition108.” These Puritans came forward with Calvinistic incredible Creeds, Anti–Laudisms, Westminster Confessions155; demanding, chiefly of all, that they should have liberty to worship in their own way. Liberty to tax themselves: that was the thing they should have demanded! It was Superstition, Fanaticism156, disgraceful ignorance of Constitutional Philosophy to insist on the other thing! — Liberty to tax oneself? Not to pay out money from your pocket except on reason shown? No century, I think, but a rather barren one would have fixed157 on that as the first right of man! I should say, on the contrary, A just man will generally have better cause than money in what shape soever, before deciding to revolt against his Government. Ours is a most confused world; in which a good man will be thankful to see any kind of Government maintain itself in a not insupportable manner: and here in England, to this hour, if he is not ready to pay a great many taxes which he can see very small reason in, it will not go well with him, I think! He must try some other climate than this. Tax-gatherer? Money? He will say: “Take my money, since you can, and it is so desirable to you; take it, — and take yourself away with it; and leave me alone to my work here. I am still here; can still work, after all the money you have taken from me!” But if they come to him, and say, “Acknowledge a Lie; pretend to say you are worshipping God, when you are not doing it: believe not the thing that you find true, but the thing that I find, or pretend to find true!” He will answer: “No; by God’s help, no! You may take my purse; but I cannot have my moral Self annihilated158. The purse is any Highwayman’s who might meet me with a loaded pistol: but the Self is mine and God my Maker159’s; it is not yours; and I will resist you to the death, and revolt against you, and, on the whole, front all manner of extremities160, accusations162 and confusions, in defence of that!” —
Really, it seems to me the one reason which could justify163 revolting, this of the Puritans. It has been the soul of all just revolts among men. Not Hunger alone produced even the French Revolution; no, but the feeling of the insupportable all-pervading Falsehood which had now embodied itself in Hunger, in universal material Scarcity164 and Nonentity, and thereby165 become indisputably false in the eyes of all! We will leave the Eighteenth century with its “liberty to tax itself.” We will not astonish ourselves that the meaning of such men as the Puritans remained dim to it. To men who believe in no reality at all, how shall a real human soul, the intensest of all realities, as it were the Voice of this world’s Maker still speaking to us, — be intelligible166? What it cannot reduce into constitutional doctrines169 relative to “taxing,” or other the like material interest, gross, palpable to the sense, such a century will needs reject as an amorphous170 heap of rubbish. Hampdens, Pyms and Ship-money will be the theme of much constitutional eloquence, striving to be fervid171; — which will glitter, if not as fire does, then as ice does: and the irreducible Cromwell will remain a chaotic mass of “madness,” “hypocrisy172,” and much else.
From of old, I will confess, this theory of Cromwell’s falsity has been incredible to me. Nay I cannot believe the like, of any Great Man whatever. Multitudes of Great Men figure in History as false selfish men; but if we will consider it, they are but figures for us, unintelligible173 shadows; we do not see into them as men that could have existed at all. A superficial unbelieving generation only, with no eye but for the surfaces and semblances of things, could form such notions of Great Men. Can a great soul be possible without a conscience in it, the essence of all real souls, great or small? — No, we cannot figure Cromwell as a Falsity and Fatuity174; the longer I study him and his career, I believe this the less. Why should we? There is no evidence of it. Is it not strange that, after all the mountains of calumny175 this man has been subject to, after being represented as the very prince of liars177, who never, or hardly ever, spoke178 truth, but always some cunning counterfeit179 of truth, there should not yet have been one falsehood brought clearly home to him? A prince of liars, and no lie spoken by him. Not one that I could yet get sight of. It is like Pococke asking Grotius, Where is your proof of Mahomet’s Pigeon? No proof! — Let us leave all these calumnious180 chimeras, as chimeras ought to be left. They are not portraits of the man; they are distracted phantasms of him, the joint181 product of hatred182 and darkness.
Looking at the man’s life with our own eyes, it seems to me, a very different hypothesis suggests itself. What little we know of his earlier obscure years, distorted as it has come down to us, does it not all betoken183 an earnest, affectionate, sincere kind of man? His nervous melancholic184 temperament185 indicates rather a seriousness too deep for him. Of those stories of “Spectres;” of the white Spectre in broad daylight, predicting that he should be King of England, we are not bound to believe much; — probably no more than of the other black Spectre, or Devil in person, to whom the Officer saw him sell himself before Worcester Fight! But the mournful, oversensitive, hypochondriac humor of Oliver, in his young years, is otherwise indisputably known. The Huntingdon Physician told Sir Philip Warwick himself, He had often been sent for at midnight; Mr. Cromwell was full of hypochondria, thought himself near dying, and “had fancies about the Town-cross.” These things are significant. Such an excitable deep-feeling nature, in that rugged stubborn strength of his, is not the symptom of falsehood; it is the symptom and promise of quite other than falsehood!
The young Oliver is sent to study Law; falls, or is said to have fallen, for a little period, into some of the dissipations of youth; but if so, speedily repents186, abandons all this: not much above twenty, he is married, settled as an altogether grave and quiet man. “He pays back what money he had won at gambling,” says the story; — he does not think any gain of that kind could be really his. It is very interesting, very natural, this “conversion,” as they well name it; this awakening187 of a great true soul from the worldly slough188, to see into the awful truth of things; — to see that Time and its shows all rested on Eternity189, and this poor Earth of ours was the threshold either of Heaven or of Hell! Oliver’s life at St. Ives and Ely, as a sober industrious190 Farmer, is it not altogether as that of a true and devout191 man? He has renounced192 the world and its ways; its prizes are not the thing that can enrich him. He tills the earth; he reads his Bible; daily assembles his servants round him to worship God. He comforts persecuted193 ministers, is fond of preachers; nay can himself preach, — exhorts194 his neighbors to be wise, to redeem195 the time. In all this what “hypocrisy,” “ambition,” “cant,” or other falsity? The man’s hopes, I do believe, were fixed on the other Higher World; his aim to get well thither196, by walking well through his humble197 course in this world. He courts no notice: what could notice here do for him? “Ever in his great Taskmaster’s eye.”
It is striking, too, how he comes out once into public view; he, since no other is willing to come: in resistance to a public grievance198. I mean, in that matter of the Bedford Fens199. No one else will go to law with Authority; therefore he will. That matter once settled, he returns back into obscurity, to his Bible and his Plough. “Gain influence”? His influence is the most legitimate200; derived201 from personal knowledge of him, as a just, religious, reasonable and determined202 man. In this way he has lived till past forty; old age is now in view of him, and the earnest portal of Death and Eternity; it was at this point that he suddenly became “ambitious”! I do not interpret his Parliamentary mission in that way!
His successes in Parliament, his successes through the war, are honest successes of a brave man; who has more resolution in the heart of him, more light in the head of him than other men. His prayers to God; his spoken thanks to the God of Victory, who had preserved him safe, and carried him forward so far, through the furious clash of a world all set in conflict, through desperate-looking envelopments at Dunbar; through the death-hail of so many battles; mercy after mercy; to the “crowning mercy” of Worcester Fight: all this is good and genuine for a deep-hearted Calvinistic Cromwell. Only to vain unbelieving Cavaliers, worshipping not God but their own “love-locks,” frivolities and formalities, living quite apart from contemplations of God, living without God in the world, need it seem hypocritical.
Nor will his participation203 in the King’s death involve him in condemnation204 with us. It is a stern business killing205 of a King! But if you once go to war with him, it lies there; this and all else lies there. Once at war, you have made wager206 of battle with him: it is he to die, or else you. Reconciliation207 is problematic; may be possible, or, far more likely, is impossible. It is now pretty generally admitted that the Parliament, having vanquished208 Charles First, had no way of making any tenable arrangement with him. The large Presbyterian party, apprehensive209 now of the Independents, were most anxious to do so; anxious indeed as for their own existence; but it could not be. The unhappy Charles, in those final Hampton–Court negotiations210, shows himself as a man fatally incapable211 of being dealt with. A man who, once for all, could not and would not understand:— whose thought did not in any measure represent to him the real fact of the matter; nay worse, whose word did not at all represent his thought. We may say this of him without cruelty, with deep pity rather: but it is true and undeniable. Forsaken212 there of all but the name of Kingship, he still, finding himself treated with outward respect as a King, fancied that he might play off party against party, and smuggle214 himself into his old power by deceiving both. Alas, they both discovered that he was deceiving them. A man whose word will not inform you at all what he means or will do, is not a man you can bargain with. You must get out of that man’s way, or put him out of yours! The Presbyterians, in their despair, were still for believing Charles, though found false, unbelievable again and again. Not so Cromwell: “For all our fighting,” says he, “we are to have a little bit of paper?” No —!
In fact, everywhere we have to note the decisive practical eye of this man; how he drives towards the practical and practicable; has a genuine insight into what is fact. Such an intellect, I maintain, does not belong to a false man: the false man sees false shows, plausibilities, expediences: the true man is needed to discern even practical truth. Cromwell’s advice about the Parliament’s Army, early in the contest, How they were to dismiss their city-tapsters, flimsy riotous215 persons, and choose substantial yeomen, whose heart was in the work, to be soldiers for them: this is advice by a man who saw. Fact answers, if you see into Fact! Cromwell’s Ironsides were the embodiment of this insight of his; men fearing God; and without any other fear. No more conclusively216 genuine set of fighters ever trod the soil of England, or of any other land.
Neither will we blame greatly that word of Cromwell’s to them; which was so blamed: “If the King should meet me in battle, I would kill the King.” Why not? These words were spoken to men who stood as before a Higher than Kings. They had set more than their own lives on the cast. The Parliament may call it, in official language, a fighting “for the King;” but we, for our share, cannot understand that. To us it is no dilettante217 work, no sleek218 officiality; it is sheer rough death and earnest. They have brought it to the calling-forth of War; horrid219 internecine220 fight, man grappling with man in fire-eyed rage, — the infernal element in man called forth, to try it by that! Do that therefore; since that is the thing to be done. — The successes of Cromwell seem to me a very natural thing! Since he was not shot in battle, they were an inevitable thing. That such a man, with the eye to see, with the heart to dare, should advance, from post to post, from victory to victory, till the Huntingdon Farmer became, by whatever name you might call him, the acknowledged Strongest Man in England, virtually the King of England, requires no magic to explain it —!
Truly it is a sad thing for a people, as for a man, to fall into Scepticism, into dilettantism221, insincerity; not to know Sincerity when they see it. For this world, and for all worlds, what curse is so fatal? The heart lying dead, the eye cannot see. What intellect remains is merely the vulpine intellect. That a true King be sent them is of small use; they do not know him when sent. They say scornfully, Is this your King? The Hero wastes his heroic faculty in bootless contradiction from the unworthy; and can accomplish little. For himself he does accomplish a heroic life, which is much, which is all; but for the world he accomplishes comparatively nothing. The wild rude Sincerity, direct from Nature, is not glib in answering from the witness-box: in your small-debt pie-powder court, he is scouted222 as a counterfeit. The vulpine intellect “detects” him. For being a man worth any thousand men, the response your Knox, your Cromwell gets, is an argument for two centuries whether he was a man at all. God’s greatest gift to this Earth is sneeringly223 flung away. The miraculous224 talisman225 is a paltry226 plated coin, not fit to pass in the shops as a common guinea.
Lamentable227 this! I say, this must be remedied. Till this be remedied in some measure, there is nothing remedied. “Detect quacks228”? Yes do, for Heaven’s sake; but know withal the men that are to be trusted! Till we know that, what is all our knowledge; how shall we even so much as “detect”? For the vulpine sharpness, which considers itself to be knowledge, and “detects” in that fashion, is far mistaken. Dupes indeed are many: but, of all dupes, there is none so fatally situated229 as he who lives in undue230 terror of being duped. The world does exist; the world has truth in it, or it would not exist! First recognize what is true, we shall then discern what is false; and properly never till then.
“Know the men that are to be trusted:” alas, this is yet, in these days, very far from us. The sincere alone can recognize sincerity. Not a Hero only is needed, but a world fit for him; a world not of Valets; — the Hero comes almost in vain to it otherwise! Yes, it is far from us: but it must come; thank God, it is visibly coming. Till it do come, what have we? Ballot-boxes, suffrages, French Revolutions:— if we are as Valets, and do not know the Hero when we see him, what good are all these? A heroic Cromwell comes; and for a hundred and fifty years he cannot have a vote from us. Why, the insincere, unbelieving world is the natural property of the Quack, and of the Father of quacks and quackeries! Misery, confusion, unveracity are alone possible there. By ballot-boxes we alter the figure of our Quack; but the substance of him continues. The Valet–World has to be governed by the Sham231–Hero, by the King merely dressed in King-gear. It is his; he is its! In brief, one of two things: We shall either learn to know a Hero, a true Governor and Captain, somewhat better, when we see him; or else go on to be forever governed by the Unheroic; — had we ballot-boxes clattering232 at every street-corner, there were no remedy in these.
Poor Cromwell, — great Cromwell! The inarticulate Prophet; Prophet who could not speak. Rude, confused, struggling to utter himself, with his savage depth, with his wild sincerity; and he looked so strange, among the elegant Euphemisms, dainty little Falklands, didactic Chillingworths, diplomatic Clarendons! Consider him. An outer hull233 of chaotic confusion, visions of the Devil, nervous dreams, almost semi-madness; and yet such a clear determinate man’s-energy working in the heart of that. A kind of chaotic man. The ray as of pure starlight and fire, working in such an element of boundless234 hypochondria, unformed black of darkness! And yet withal this hypochondria, what was it but the very greatness of the man? The depth and tenderness of his wild affections: the quantity of sympathy he had with things, — the quantity of insight he would yet get into the heart of things, the mastery he would yet get over things: this was his hypochondria. The man’s misery, as man’s misery always does, came of his greatness. Samuel Johnson too is that kind of man. Sorrow-stricken, half-distracted; the wide element of mournful black enveloping235 him, — wide as the world. It is the character of a prophetic man; a man with his whole soul seeing, and struggling to see.
On this ground, too, I explain to myself Cromwell’s reputed confusion of speech. To himself the internal meaning was sun-clear; but the material with which he was to clothe it in utterance was not there. He had lived silent; a great unnamed sea of Thought round him all his days; and in his way of life little call to attempt naming or uttering that. With his sharp power of vision, resolute6 power of action, I doubt not he could have learned to write Books withal, and speak fluently enough; — he did harder things than writing of Books. This kind of man is precisely he who is fit for doing manfully all things you will set him on doing. Intellect is not speaking and logicizing; it is seeing and ascertaining237. Virtue, Virtues238, manhood, herohood, is not fair-spoken immaculate regularity; it is first of all, what the Germans well name it, Tugend (Taugend, dow-ing or Dough-tiness), Courage and the Faculty to do. This basis of the matter Cromwell had in him.
One understands moreover how, though he could not speak in Parliament, he might preach, rhapsodic preaching; above all, how he might be great in extempore prayer. These are the free outpouring utterances239 of what is in the heart: method is not required in them; warmth, depth, sincerity are all that is required. Cromwell’s habit of prayer is a notable feature of him. All his great enterprises were commenced with prayer. In dark inextricable-looking difficulties, his Officers and he used to assemble, and pray alternately, for hours, for days, till some definite resolution rose among them, some “door of hope,” as they would name it, disclosed itself. Consider that. In tears, in fervent240 prayers, and cries to the great God, to have pity on them, to make His light shine before them. They, armed Soldiers of Christ, as they felt themselves to be; a little band of Christian Brothers, who had drawn241 the sword against a great black devouring242 world not Christian, but Mammonish, Devilish, — they cried to God in their straits, in their extreme need, not to forsake213 the Cause that was His. The light which now rose upon them, — how could a human soul, by any means at all, get better light? Was not the purpose so formed like to be precisely the best, wisest, the one to be followed without hesitation243 any more? To them it was as the shining of Heaven’s own Splendor244 in the waste-howling darkness; the Pillar of Fire by night, that was to guide them on their desolate245 perilous246 way. Was it not such? Can a man’s soul, to this hour, get guidance by any other method than intrinsically by that same, — devout prostration247 of the earnest struggling soul before the Highest, the Giver of all Light; be such prayer a spoken, articulate, or be it a voiceless, inarticulate one? There is no other method. “Hypocrisy”? One begins to be weary of all that. They who call it so, have no right to speak on such matters. They never formed a purpose, what one can call a purpose. They went about balancing expediencies, plausibilities; gathering248 votes, advices; they never were alone with the truth of a thing at all. — Cromwell’s prayers were likely to be “eloquent,” and much more than that. His was the heart of a man who could pray.
But indeed his actual Speeches, I apprehend249, were not nearly so ineloquent, incondite, as they look. We find he was, what all speakers aim to be, an impressive speaker, even in Parliament; one who, from the first, had weight. With that rude passionate250 voice of his, he was always understood to mean something, and men wished to know what. He disregarded eloquence, nay despised and disliked it; spoke always without premeditation of the words he was to use. The Reporters, too, in those days seem to have been singularly candid251; and to have given the Printer precisely what they found on their own note-paper. And withal, what a strange proof is it of Cromwell’s being the premeditative ever-calculating hypocrite, acting252 a play before the world, That to the last he took no more charge of his Speeches! How came he not to study his words a little, before flinging them out to the public? If the words were true words, they could be left to shift for themselves.
But with regard to Cromwell’s “lying,” we will make one remark. This, I suppose, or something like this, to have been the nature of it. All parties found themselves deceived in him; each party understood him to be meaning this, heard him even say so, and behold253 he turns out to have been meaning that! He was, cry they, the chief of liars. But now, intrinsically, is not all this the inevitable fortune, not of a false man in such times, but simply of a superior man? Such a man must have reticences in him. If he walk wearing his heart upon his sleeve for daws to peck at, his journey will not extend far! There is no use for any man’s taking up his abode254 in a house built of glass. A man always is to be himself the judge how much of his mind he will show to other men; even to those he would have work along with him. There are impertinent inquiries255 made: your rule is, to leave the inquirer uninformed on that matter; not, if you can help it, misinformed, but precisely as dark as he was! This, could one hit the right phrase of response, is what the wise and faithful man would aim to answer in such a case.
Cromwell, no doubt of it, spoke often in the dialect of small subaltern parties; uttered to them a part of his mind. Each little party thought him all its own. Hence their rage, one and all, to find him not of their party, but of his own party. Was it his blame? At all seasons of his history he must have felt, among such people, how, if he explained to them the deeper insight he had, they must either have shuddered256 aghast at it, or believing it, their own little compact hypothesis must have gone wholly to wreck. They could not have worked in his province any more; nay perhaps they could not now have worked in their own province. It is the inevitable position of a great man among small men. Small men, most active, useful, are to be seen everywhere, whose whole activity depends on some conviction which to you is palpably a limited one; imperfect, what we call an error. But would it be a kindness always, is it a duty always or often, to disturb them in that? Many a man, doing loud work in the world, stands only on some thin traditionality, conventionality; to him indubitable, to you incredible: break that beneath him, he sinks to endless depths! “I might have my hand full of truth,” said Fontenelle, “and open only my little finger.”
And if this be the fact even in matters of doctrine168, how much more in all departments of practice! He that cannot withal keep his mind to himself cannot practice any considerable thing whatever. And we call it “dissimulation,” all this? What would you think of calling the general of an army a dissembler because he did not tell every corporal and private soldier, who pleased to put the question, what his thoughts were about everything? — Cromwell, I should rather say, managed all this in a manner we must admire for its perfection. An endless vortex of such questioning “corporals” rolled confusedly round him through his whole course; whom he did answer. It must have been as a great true-seeing man that he managed this too. Not one proved falsehood, as I said; not one! Of what man that ever wound himself through such a coil of things will you say so much? —
But in fact there are two errors, widely prevalent, which pervert257 to the very basis our judgments259 formed about such men as Cromwell; about their “ambition,” “falsity,” and such like. The first is what I might call substituting the goal of their career for the course and starting-point of it. The vulgar Historian of a Cromwell fancies that he had determined on being Protector of England, at the time when he was ploughing the marsh260 lands of Cambridgeshire. His career lay all mapped out: a program of the whole drama; which he then step by step dramatically unfolded, with all manner of cunning, deceptive261 dramaturgy, as he went on, — the hollow, scheming [Gr.] Upokrites, or Play-actor, that he was! This is a radical262 perversion263; all but universal in such cases. And think for an instant how different the fact is! How much does one of us foresee of his own life? Short way ahead of us it is all dim; an unwound skein of possibilities, of apprehensions264, attemptabilities, vague-looming hopes. This Cromwell had not his life lying all in that fashion of Program, which he needed then, with that unfathomable cunning of his, only to enact265 dramatically, scene after scene! Not so. We see it so; but to him it was in no measure so. What absurdities266 would fall away of themselves, were this one undeniable fact kept honestly in view by History! Historians indeed will tell you that they do keep it in view; — but look whether such is practically the fact! Vulgar History, as in this Cromwell’s case, omits it altogether; even the best kinds of History only remember it now and then. To remember it duly with rigorous perfection, as in the fact it stood, requires indeed a rare faculty; rare, nay impossible. A very Shakspeare for faculty; or more than Shakspeare; who could enact a brother man’s biography, see with the brother man’s eyes at all points of his course what things he saw; in short, know his course and him, as few “Historians” are like to do. Half or more of all the thick-plied perversions267 which distort our image of Cromwell, will disappear, if we honestly so much as try to represent them so; in sequence, as they were; not in the lump, as they are thrown down before us.
But a second error, which I think the generality commit, refers to this same “ambition” itself. We exaggerate the ambition of Great Men; we mistake what the nature of it is. Great Men are not ambitious in that sense; he is a small poor man that is ambitious so. Examine the man who lives in misery because he does not shine above other men; who goes about producing himself, pruriently269 anxious about his gifts and claims; struggling to force everybody, as it were begging everybody for God’s sake, to acknowledge him a great man, and set him over the heads of men! Such a creature is among the wretchedest sights seen under this sun. A great man? A poor morbid270 prurient268 empty man; fitter for the ward4 of a hospital, than for a throne among men. I advise you to keep out of his way. He cannot walk on quiet paths; unless you will look at him, wonder at him, write paragraphs about him, he cannot live. It is the emptiness of the man, not his greatness. Because there is nothing in himself, he hungers and thirsts that you would find something in him. In good truth, I believe no great man, not so much as a genuine man who had health and real substance in him of whatever magnitude, was ever much tormented271 in this way.
Your Cromwell, what good could it do him to be “noticed” by noisy crowds of people? God his Maker already noticed him. He, Cromwell, was already there; no notice would make him other than he already was. Till his hair was grown gray; and Life from the down-hill slope was all seen to be limited, not infinite but finite, and all a measurable matter how it went, — he had been content to plough the ground, and read his Bible. He in his old days could not support it any longer, without selling himself to Falsehood, that he might ride in gilt carriages to Whitehall, and have clerks with bundles of papers haunting him, “Decide this, decide that,” which in utmost sorrow of heart no man can perfectly decide! What could gilt carriages do for this man? From of old, was there not in his life a weight of meaning, a terror and a splendor as of Heaven itself? His existence there as man set him beyond the need of gilding272. Death, Judgment258 and Eternity: these already lay as the background of whatsoever he thought or did. All his life lay begirt as in a sea of nameless Thoughts, which no speech of a mortal could name. God’s Word, as the Puritan prophets of that time had read it: this was great, and all else was little to him. To call such a man “ambitious,” to figure him as the prurient wind-bag described above, seems to me the poorest solecism. Such a man will say: “Keep your gilt carriages and huzzaing mobs, keep your red-tape clerks, your influentialities, your important businesses. Leave me alone, leave me alone; there is too much of life in me already!” Old Samuel Johnson, the greatest soul in England in his day, was not ambitious. “Corsica Boswell” flaunted273 at public shows with printed ribbons round his hat; but the great old Samuel stayed at home. The world-wide soul wrapt up in its thoughts, in its sorrows; — what could paradings, and ribbons in the hat, do for it?
Ah yes, I will say again: The great silent men! Looking round on the noisy inanity274 of the world, words with little meaning, actions with little worth, one loves to reflect on the great Empire of Silence. The noble silent men, scattered275 here and there, each in his department; silently thinking, silently working; whom no Morning Newspaper makes mention of! They are the salt of the Earth. A country that has none or few of these is in a bad way. Like a forest which had no roots; which had all turned into leaves and boughs276; — which must soon wither69 and be no forest. Woe for us if we had nothing but what we can show, or speak. Silence, the great Empire of Silence: higher than the stars; deeper than the Kingdoms of Death! It alone is great; all else is small. — I hope we English will long maintain our grand talent pour le silence. Let others that cannot do without standing on barrel-heads, to spout277, and be seen of all the market-place, cultivate speech exclusively, — become a most green forest without roots! Solomon says, There is a time to speak; but also a time to keep silence. Of some great silent Samuel, not urged to writing, as old Samuel Johnson says he was, by want of money, and nothing other, one might ask, “Why do not you too get up and speak; promulgate278 your system, found your sect63?” “Truly,” he will answer, “I am continent of my thought hitherto; happily I have yet had the ability to keep it in me, no compulsion strong enough to speak it. My ‘system’ is not for promulgation279 first of all; it is for serving myself to live by. That is the great purpose of it to me. And then the ‘honor’? Alas, yes; — but as Cato said of the statue: So many statues in that Forum280 of yours, may it not be better if they ask, Where is Cato’s statue?” —
But now, by way of counterpoise to this of Silence, let me say that there are two kinds of ambition; one wholly blamable, the other laudable and inevitable. Nature has provided that the great silent Samuel shall not be silent too long. The selfish wish to shine over others, let it be accounted altogether poor and miserable. “Seekest thou great things, seek them not:” this is most true. And yet, I say, there is an irrepressible tendency in every man to develop himself according to the magnitude which Nature has made him of; to speak out, to act out, what nature has laid in him. This is proper, fit, inevitable; nay it is a duty, and even the summary of duties for a man. The meaning of life here on earth might be defined as consisting in this: To unfold your self, to work what thing you have the faculty for. It is a necessity for the human being, the first law of our existence. Coleridge beautifully remarks that the infant learns to speak by this necessity it feels. — We will say therefore: To decide about ambition, whether it is bad or not, you have two things to take into view. Not the coveting281 of the place alone, but the fitness of the man for the place withal: that is the question. Perhaps the place was his; perhaps he had a natural right, and even obligation, to seek the place! Mirabeau’s ambition to be Prime Minister, how shall we blame it, if he were “the only man in France that could have done any good there”? Hopefuler perhaps had he not so clearly felt how much good he could do! But a poor Necker, who could do no good, and had even felt that he could do none, yet sitting broken-hearted because they had flung him out, and he was now quit of it, well might Gibbon mourn over him. — Nature, I say, has provided amply that the silent great man shall strive to speak withal; too amply, rather!
Fancy, for example, you had revealed to the brave old Samuel Johnson, in his shrouded-up existence, that it was possible for him to do priceless divine work for his country and the whole world. That the perfect Heavenly Law might be made Law on this Earth; that the prayer he prayed daily, “Thy kingdom come,” was at length to be fulfilled! If you had convinced his judgment of this; that it was possible, practicable; that he the mournful silent Samuel was called to take a part in it! Would not the whole soul of the man have flamed up into a divine clearness, into noble utterance and determination to act; casting all sorrows and misgivings282 under his feet, counting all affliction and contradiction small, — the whole dark element of his existence blazing into articulate radiance of light and lightning? It were a true ambition this! And think now how it actually was with Cromwell. From of old, the sufferings of God’s Church, true zealous283 Preachers of the truth flung into dungeons284, whips, set on pillories285, their ears crops off, God’s Gospel-cause trodden under foot of the unworthy: all this had lain heavy on his soul. Long years he had looked upon it, in silence, in prayer; seeing no remedy on Earth; trusting well that a remedy in Heaven’s goodness would come, — that such a course was false, unjust, and could not last forever. And now behold the dawn of it; after twelve years silent waiting, all England stirs itself; there is to be once more a Parliament, the Right will get a voice for itself: inexpressible well-grounded hope has come again into the Earth. Was not such a Parliament worth being a member of? Cromwell threw down his ploughs, and hastened thither.
He spoke there, — rugged bursts of earnestness, of a self-seen truth, where we get a glimpse of them. He worked there; he fought and strove, like a strong true giant of a man, through cannon-tumult and all else, — on and on, till the Cause triumphed, its once so formidable enemies all swept from before it, and the dawn of hope had become clear light of victory and certainty. That he stood there as the strongest soul of England, the undisputed Hero of all England, — what of this? It was possible that the Law of Christ’s Gospel could now establish itself in the world! The Theocracy286 which John Knox in his pulpit might dream of as a “devout imagination,” this practical man, experienced in the whole chaos of most rough practice, dared to consider as capable of being realized. Those that were highest in Christ’s Church, the devoutest wisest men, were to rule the land: in some considerable degree, it might be so and should be so. Was it not true, God’s truth? And if true, was it not then the very thing to do? The strongest practical intellect in England dared to answer, Yes! This I call a noble true purpose; is it not, in its own dialect, the noblest that could enter into the heart of Statesman or man? For a Knox to take it up was something; but for a Cromwell, with his great sound sense and experience of what our world was, — History, I think, shows it only this once in such a degree. I account it the culminating point of Protestantism; the most heroic phasis that “Faith in the Bible” was appointed to exhibit here below. Fancy it: that it were made manifest to one of us, how we could make the Right supremely287 victorious288 over Wrong, and all that we had longed and prayed for, as the highest good to England and all lands, an attainable289 fact!
Well, I must say, the vulpine intellect, with its knowingness, its alertness and expertness in “detecting hypocrites,” seems to me a rather sorry business. We have had but one such Statesman in England; one man, that I can get sight of, who ever had in the heart of him any such purpose at all. One man, in the course of fifteen hundred years; and this was his welcome. He had adherents290 by the hundred or the ten; opponents by the million. Had England rallied all round him, — why, then, England might have been a Christian land! As it is, vulpine knowingness sits yet at its hopeless problem, “Given a world of Knaves291, to educe167 an Honesty from their united action;" — how cumbrous a problem, you may see in Chancery Law–Courts, and some other places! Till at length, by Heaven’s just anger, but also by Heaven’s great grace, the matter begins to stagnate292; and this problem is becoming to all men a palpably hopeless one. —
But with regard to Cromwell and his purposes: Hume, and a multitude following him, come upon me here with an admission that Cromwell was sincere at first; a sincere “Fanatic” at first, but gradually became a “Hypocrite” as things opened round him. This of the Fanatic–Hypocrite is Hume’s theory of it; extensively applied293 since, — to Mahomet and many others. Think of it seriously, you will find something in it; not much, not all, very far from all. Sincere hero hearts do not sink in this miserable manner. The Sun flings forth impurities294, gets balefully incrusted with spots; but it does not quench295 itself, and become no Sun at all, but a mass of Darkness! I will venture to say that such never befell a great deep Cromwell; I think, never. Nature’s own lionhearted Son; Antaeus-like, his strength is got by touching296 the Earth, his Mother; lift him up from the Earth, lift him up into Hypocrisy, Inanity, his strength is gone. We will not assert that Cromwell was an immaculate man; that he fell into no faults, no insincerities among the rest. He was no dilettante professor of “perfections,” “immaculate conducts.” He was a rugged Orson, rending297 his rough way through actual true work, — doubtless with many a fall therein. Insincerities, faults, very many faults daily and hourly: it was too well known to him; known to God and him! The Sun was dimmed many a time; but the Sun had not himself grown a Dimness. Cromwell’s last words, as he lay waiting for death, are those of a Christian heroic man. Broken prayers to God, that He would judge him and this Cause, He since man could not, in justice yet in pity. They are most touching words. He breathed out his wild great soul, its toils298 and sins all ended now, into the presence of his Maker, in this manner.
I, for one, will not call the man a Hypocrite! Hypocrite, mummer, the life of him a mere theatricality301; empty barren quack, hungry for the shouts of mobs? The man had made obscurity do very well for him till his head was gray; and now he was, there as he stood recognized unblamed, the virtual King of England. Cannot a man do without King’s Coaches and Cloaks? Is it such a blessedness to have clerks forever pestering302 you with bundles of papers in red tape? A simple Diocletian prefers planting of cabbages; a George Washington, no very immeasurable man, does the like. One would say, it is what any genuine man could do; and would do. The instant his real work were out in the matter of Kingship, — away with it!
Let us remark, meanwhile, how indispensable everywhere a King is, in all movements of men. It is strikingly shown, in this very War, what becomes of men when they cannot find a Chief Man, and their enemies can. The Scotch303 Nation was all but unanimous in Puritanism; zealous and of one mind about it, as in this English end of the Island was always far from being the case. But there was no great Cromwell among them; poor tremulous, hesitating, diplomatic Argyles and such like: none of them had a heart true enough for the truth, or durst commit himself to the truth. They had no leader; and the scattered Cavalier party in that country had one: Montrose, the noblest of all the Cavaliers; an accomplished, gallant-hearted, splendid man; what one may call the Hero–Cavalier. Well, look at it; on the one hand subjects without a King; on the other a King without subjects! The subjects without King can do nothing; the subjectless King can do something. This Montrose, with a handful of Irish or Highland304 savages124, few of them so much as guns in their hands, dashes at the drilled Puritan armies like a wild whirlwind; sweeps them, time after time, some five times over, from the field before him. He was at one period, for a short while, master of all Scotland. One man; but he was a man; a million zealous men, but without the one; they against him were powerless! Perhaps of all the persons in that Puritan struggle, from first to last, the single indispensable one was verily Cromwell. To see and dare, and decide; to be a fixed pillar in the welter of uncertainty305; — a King among them, whether they called him so or not.
Precisely here, however, lies the rub for Cromwell. His other proceedings306 have all found advocates, and stand generally justified307; but this dismissal of the Rump Parliament and assumption of the Protectorship, is what no one can pardon him. He had fairly grown to be King in England; Chief Man of the victorious party in England: but it seems he could not do without the King’s Cloak, and sold himself to perdition in order to get it. Let us see a little how this was.
England, Scotland, Ireland, all lying now subdued308 at the feet of the Puritan Parliament, the practical question arose, What was to be done with it? How will you govern these Nations, which Providence309 in a wondrous310 way has given up to your disposal? Clearly those hundred surviving members of the Long Parliament, who sit there as supreme authority, cannot continue forever to sit. What is to be done? — It was a question which theoretical constitution-builders may find easy to answer; but to Cromwell, looking there into the real practical facts of it, there could be none more complicated. He asked of the Parliament, What it was they would decide upon? It was for the Parliament to say. Yet the Soldiers too, however contrary to Formula, they who had purchased this victory with their blood, it seemed to them that they also should have something to say in it! We will not “for all our fighting have nothing but a little piece of paper.” We understand that the Law of God’s Gospel, to which He through us has given the victory, shall establish itself, or try to establish itself, in this land!
For three years, Cromwell says, this question had been sounded in the ears of the Parliament. They could make no answer; nothing but talk, talk. Perhaps it lies in the nature of parliamentary bodies; perhaps no Parliament could in such case make any answer but even that of talk, talk! Nevertheless the question must and shall be answered. You sixty men there, becoming fast odious311, even despicable, to the whole nation, whom the nation already calls Rump Parliament, you cannot continue to sit there: who or what then is to follow? “Free Parliament,” right of Election, Constitutional Formulas of one sort or the other, — the thing is a hungry Fact coming on us, which we must answer or be devoured312 by it! And who are you that prate313 of Constitutional Formulas, rights of Parliament? You have had to kill your King, to make Pride’s Purges314, to expel and banish315 by the law of the stronger whosoever would not let your Cause prosper316: there are but fifty or threescore of you left there, debating in these days. Tell us what we shall do; not in the way of Formula, but of practicable Fact!
How they did finally answer, remains obscure to this day. The diligent145 Godwin himself admits that he cannot make it out. The likeliest is, that this poor Parliament still would not, and indeed could not dissolve and disperse317; that when it came to the point of actually dispersing318, they again, for the tenth or twentieth time, adjourned319 it, — and Cromwell’s patience failed him. But we will take the favorablest hypothesis ever started for the Parliament; the favorablest, though I believe it is not the true one, but too favorable.
According to this version: At the uttermost crisis, when Cromwell and his Officers were met on the one hand, and the fifty or sixty Rump Members on the other, it was suddenly told Cromwell that the Rump in its despair was answering in a very singular way; that in their splenetic envious320 despair, to keep out the Army at least, these men were hurrying through the House a kind of Reform Bill, — Parliament to be chosen by the whole of England; equable electoral division into districts; free suffrage138, and the rest of it! A very questionable, or indeed for them an unquestionable thing. Reform Bill, free suffrage of Englishmen? Why, the Royalists themselves, silenced indeed but not exterminated321, perhaps outnumber us; the great numerical majority of England was always indifferent to our Cause, merely looked at it and submitted to it. It is in weight and force, not by counting of heads, that we are the majority! And now with your Formulas and Reform Bills, the whole matter, sorely won by our swords, shall again launch itself to sea; become a mere hope, and likelihood, small even as a likelihood? And it is not a likelihood; it is a certainty, which we have won, by God’s strength and our own right hands, and do now hold here. Cromwell walked down to these refractory322 Members; interrupted them in that rapid speed of their Reform Bill; — ordered them to begone, and talk there no more. — Can we not forgive him? Can we not understand him? John Milton, who looked on it all near at hand, could applaud him. The Reality had swept the Formulas away before it. I fancy, most men who were realities in England might see into the necessity of that.
The strong daring man, therefore, has set all manner of Formulas and logical superficialities against him; has dared appeal to the genuine Fact of this England, Whether it will support him or not? It is curious to see how he struggles to govern in some constitutional way; find some Parliament to support him; but cannot. His first Parliament, the one they call Barebones’s Parliament, is, so to speak, a Convocation of the Notables. From all quarters of England the leading Ministers and chief Puritan Officials nominate the men most distinguished323 by religious reputation, influence and attachment324 to the true Cause: these are assembled to shape out a plan. They sanctioned what was past; shaped as they could what was to come. They were scornfully called Barebones’s Parliament: the man’s name, it seems, was not Barebones, but Barbone, — a good enough man. Nor was it a jest, their work; it was a most serious reality, — a trial on the part of these Puritan Notables how far the Law of Christ could become the Law of this England. There were men of sense among them, men of some quality; men of deep piety325 I suppose the most of them were. They failed, it seems, and broke down, endeavoring to reform the Court of Chancery! They dissolved themselves, as incompetent326; delivered up their power again into the hands of the Lord General Cromwell, to do with it what he liked and could.
What will he do with it? The Lord General Cromwell, “Commander-in-chief of all the Forces raised and to be raised;” he hereby sees himself, at this unexampled juncture327, as it were the one available Authority left in England, nothing between England and utter Anarchy but him alone. Such is the undeniable Fact of his position and England’s, there and then. What will he do with it? After deliberation, he decides that he will accept it; will formally, with public solemnity, say and vow328 before God and men, “Yes, the Fact is so, and I will do the best I can with it!” Protectorship, Instrument of Government, — these are the external forms of the thing; worked out and sanctioned as they could in the circumstances be, by the Judges, by the leading Official people, “Council of Officers and Persons of interest in the Nation:” and as for the thing itself, undeniably enough, at the pass matters had now come to, there was no alternative but Anarchy or that. Puritan England might accept it or not; but Puritan England was, in real truth, saved from suicide thereby! — I believe the Puritan People did, in an inarticulate, grumbling329, yet on the whole grateful and real way, accept this anomalous330 act of Oliver’s; at least, he and they together made it good, and always better to the last. But in their Parliamentary articulate way, they had their difficulties, and never knew fully21 what to say to it —!
Oliver’s second Parliament, properly his first regular Parliament, chosen by the rule laid down in the Instrument of Government, did assemble, and worked; — but got, before long, into bottomless questions as to the Protector’s right, as to “usurpation,” and so forth; and had at the earliest legal day to be dismissed. Cromwell’s concluding Speech to these men is a remarkable331 one. So likewise to his third Parliament, in similar rebuke332 for their pedantries333 and obstinacies334. Most rude, chaotic, all these Speeches are; but most earnest-looking. You would say, it was a sincere helpless man; not used to speak the great inorganic335 thought of him, but to act it rather! A helplessness of utterance, in such bursting fulness of meaning. He talks much about “births of Providence:” All these changes, so many victories and events, were not forethoughts, and theatrical300 contrivances of men, of me or of men; it is blind blasphemers that will persist in calling them so! He insists with a heavy sulphurous wrathful emphasis on this. As he well might. As if a Cromwell in that dark huge game he had been playing, the world wholly thrown into chaos round him, had foreseen it all, and played it all off like a precontrived puppet-show by wood and wire! These things were foreseen by no man, he says; no man could tell what a day would bring forth: they were “births of Providence,” God’s finger guided us on, and we came at last to clear height of victory, God’s Cause triumphant336 in these Nations; and you as a Parliament could assemble together, and say in what manner all this could be organized, reduced into rational feasibility among the affairs of men. You were to help with your wise counsel in doing that. “You have had such an opportunity as no Parliament in England ever had.” Christ’s Law, the Right and True, was to be in some measure made the Law of this land. In place of that, you have got into your idle pedantries, constitutionalities, bottomless cavillings and questionings about written laws for my coming here; — and would send the whole matter into Chaos again, because I have no Notary337’s parchment, but only God’s voice from the battle-whirlwind, for being President among you! That opportunity is gone; and we know not when it will return. You have had your constitutional Logic236; and Mammon’s Law, not Christ’s Law, rules yet in this land. “God be judge between you and me!” These are his final words to them: Take you your constitution-formulas in your hand; and I my informal struggles, purposes, realities and acts; and “God be judge between you and me!” —
We said above what shapeless, involved chaotic things the printed Speeches of Cromwell are. Wilfully338 ambiguous, unintelligible, say the most: a hypocrite shrouding339 himself in confused Jesuitic jargon340! To me they do not seem so. I will say rather, they afforded the first glimpses I could ever get into the reality of this Cromwell, nay into the possibility of him. Try to believe that he means something, search lovingly what that may be: you will find a real speech lying imprisoned341 in these broken rude tortuous342 utterances; a meaning in the great heart of this inarticulate man! You will, for thc first time, begin to see that he was a man; not an enigmatic chimera, unintelligible to you, incredible to you. The Histories and Biographies written of this Cromwell, written in shallow sceptical generations that could not know or conceive of a deep believing man, are far more obscure than Cromwell’s Speeches. You look through them only into the infinite vague of Black and the Inane343. “Heats and jealousies,” says Lord Clarendon himself: “heats and jealousies,” mere crabbed344 whims345, theories and crotchets; these induced slow sober quiet Englishmen to lay down their ploughs and work; and fly into red fury of confused war against the best-conditioned of Kings! Try if you can find that true. Scepticism writing about Belief may have great gifts; but it is really ultra vires there. It is Blindness laying down the Laws of Optics. —
Cromwell’s third Parliament split on the same rock as his second. Ever the constitutional Formula: How came you there? Show us some Notary parchment! Blind pedants:— “Why, surely the same power which makes you a Parliament, that, and something more, made me a Protector!” If my Protectorship is nothing, what in the name of wonder is your Parliamenteership, a reflex and creation of that? —
Parliaments having failed, there remained nothing but the way of Despotism. Military Dictators, each with his district, to coerce346 the Royalist and other gainsayers, to govern them, if not by act of Parliament, then by the sword. Formula shall not carry it, while the Reality is here! I will go on, protecting oppressed Protestants abroad, appointing just judges, wise managers, at home, cherishing true Gospel ministers; doing the best I can to make England a Christian England, greater than old Rome, the Queen of Protestant Christianity; I, since you will not help me; I while God leaves me life! — Why did he not give it up; retire into obscurity again, since the Law would not acknowledge him? cry several. That is where they mistake. For him there was no giving of it up! Prime ministers have governed countries, Pitt, Pombal, Choiseul; and their word was a law while it held: but this Prime Minister was one that could not get resigned. Let him once resign, Charles Stuart and the Cavaliers waited to kill him; to kill the Cause and him. Once embarked347, there is no retreat, no return. This Prime Minister could retire no-whither except into his tomb.
One is sorry for Cromwell in his old days. His complaint is incessant348 of the heavy burden Providence has laid on him. Heavy; which he must bear till death. Old Colonel Hutchinson, as his wife relates it, Hutchinson, his old battle-mate, coming to see him on some indispensable business, much against his will, — Cromwell “follows him to the door,” in a most fraternal, domestic, conciliatory style; begs that he would be reconciled to him, his old brother in arms; says how much it grieves him to be misunderstood, deserted349 by true fellow-soldiers, dear to him from of old: the rigorous Hutchinson, cased in his Republican formula, sullenly350 goes his way. — And the man’s head now white; his strong arm growing weary with its long work! I think always too of his poor Mother, now very old, living in that Palace of his; a right brave woman; as indeed they lived all an honest God-fearing Household there: if she heard a shot go off, she thought it was her son killed. He had to come to her at least once a day, that she might see with her own eyes that he was yet living. The poor old Mother! — What had this man gained; what had he gained? He had a life of sore strife351 and toil299, to his last day. Fame, ambition, place in History? His dead body was hung in chains, his “place in History,” — place in History forsooth! — has been a place of ignominy, accusation161, blackness and disgrace; and here, this day, who knows if it is not rash in me to be among the first that ever ventured to pronounce him not a knave43 and liar176, but a genuinely honest man! Peace to him. Did he not, in spite of all, accomplish much for us? We walk smoothly352 over his great rough heroic life; step over his body sunk in the ditch there. We need not spurn353 it, as we step on it! — Let the Hero rest. It was not to men’s judgment that he appealed; nor have men judged him very well.
Precisely a century and a year after this of Puritanism had got itself hushed up into decent composure, and its results made smooth, in 1688, there broke out a far deeper explosion, much more difficult to hush354 up, known to all mortals, and like to be long known, by the name of French Revolution. It is properly the third and final act of Protestantism; the explosive confused return of mankind to Reality and Fact, now that they were perishing of Semblance and Sham. We call our English Puritanism the second act: “Well then, the Bible is true; let us go by the Bible!” “In Church,” said Luther; “In Church and State,” said Cromwell, “let us go by what actually is God’s Truth.” Men have to return to reality; they cannot live on semblance. The French Revolution, or third act, we may well call the final one; for lower than that savage Sansculottism men cannot go. They stand there on the nakedest haggard Fact, undeniable in all seasons and circumstances; and may and must begin again confidently to build up from that. The French explosion, like the English one, got its King, — who had no Notary parchment to show for himself. We have still to glance for a moment at Napoleon, our second modern King.
Napoleon does by no means seem to me so great a man as Cromwell. His enormous victories which reached over all Europe, while Cromwell abode mainly in our little England, are but as the high stilts355 on which the man is seen standing; the stature356 of the man is not altered thereby. I find in him no such sincerity as in Cromwell; only a far inferior sort. No silent walking, through long years, with the Awful Unnamable of this Universe; “walking with God,” as he called it; and faith and strength in that alone: latent thought and valor357, content to lie latent, then burst out as in blaze of Heaven’s lightning! Napoleon lived in an age when God was no longer believed; the meaning of all Silence, Latency, was thought to be Nonentity: he had to begin not out of the Puritan Bible, but out of poor Sceptical Encyclopedies. This was the length the man carried it. Meritorious to get so far. His compact, prompt, every way articulate character is in itself perhaps small, compared with our great chaotic inarticulate Cromwell’s. Instead of “dumb Prophet struggling to speak,” we have a portentous358 mixture of the Quack withal! Hume’s notion of the Fanatic–Hypocrite, with such truth as it has, will apply much better to Napoleon than it did to Cromwell, to Mahomet or the like, — where indeed taken strictly359 it has hardly any truth at all. An element of blamable ambition shows itself, from the first, in this man; gets the victory over him at last, and involves him and his work in ruin.
“False as a bulletin” became a proverb in Napoleon’s time. He makes what excuse he could for it: that it was necessary to mislead the enemy, to keep up his own men’s courage, and so forth. On the whole, there are no excuses. A man in no case has liberty to tell lies. It had been, in the long-run, better for Napoleon too if he had not told any. In fact, if a man have any purpose reaching beyond the hour and day, meant to be found extant next day, what good can it ever be to promulgate lies? The lies are found out; ruinous penalty is exacted for them. No man will believe the liar next time even when he speaks truth, when it is of the last importance that he be believed. The old cry of wolf! — A Lie is no-thing; you cannot of nothing make something; you make nothing at last, and lose your labor76 into the bargain.
Yet Napoleon had a sincerity: we are to distinguish between what is superficial and what is fundamental in insincerity. Across these outer manoeuverings and quackeries of his, which were many and most blamable, let us discern withal that the man had a certain instinctive361 ineradicable feeling for reality; and did base himself upon fact, so long as he had any basis. He has an instinct of Nature better than his culture was. His savans, Bourrienne tells us, in that voyage to Egypt were one evening busily occupied arguing that there could be no God. They had proved it, to their satisfaction, by all manner of logic. Napoleon looking up into the stars, answers, “Very ingenious, Messieurs: but who made all that?” The Atheistic362 logic runs off from him like water; the great Fact stares him in the face: “Who made all that?” So too in Practice: he, as every man that can be great, or have victory in this world, sees, through all entanglements363, the practical heart of the matter; drives straight towards that. When the steward364 of his Tuileries Palace was exhibiting the new upholstery, with praises, and demonstration365 how glorious it was, and how cheap withal, Napoleon, making little answer, asked for a pair of scissors, clips one of the gold tassels366 from a window-curtain, put it in his pocket, and walked on. Some days afterwards, he produced it at the right moment, to the horror of his upholstery functionary367; it was not gold but tinsel! In St. Helena, it is notable how he still, to his last days, insists on the practical, the real. “Why talk and complain; above all, why quarrel with one another? There is no result in it; it comes to nothing that one can do. Say nothing, if one can do nothing!” He speaks often so, to his poor discontented followers368; he is like a piece of silent strength in the middle of their morbid querulousness there.
And accordingly was there not what we can call a faith in him, genuine so far as it went? That this new enormous Democracy asserting itself here in the French Revolution is an unsuppressible Fact, which the whole world, with its old forces and institutions, cannot put down; this was a true insight of his, and took his conscience and enthusiasm along with it, — a faith. And did he not interpret the dim purport of it well? “La carriere ouverte aux talens, The implements369 to him who can handle them:” this actually is the truth, and even the whole truth; it includes whatever the French Revolution or any Revolution, could mean. Napoleon, in his first period, was a true Democrat371. And yet by the nature of him, fostered too by his military trade, he knew that Democracy, if it were a true thing at all, could not be an anarchy: the man had a heart-hatred for anarchy. On that Twentieth of June (1792), Bourrienne and he sat in a coffee-house, as the mob rolled by: Napoleon expresses the deepest contempt for persons in authority that they do not restrain this rabble372. On the Tenth of August he wonders why there is no man to command these poor Swiss; they would conquer if there were. Such a faith in Democracy, yet hatred of anarchy, it is that carries Napoleon through all his great work. Through his brilliant Italian Campaigns, onwards to the Peace of Leoben, one would say, his inspiration is: “Triumph to the French Revolution; assertion of it against these Austrian Simulacra that pretend to call it a Simulacrum!” Withal, however, he feels, and has a right to feel, how necessary a strong Authority is; how the Revolution cannot prosper or last without such. To bridle373 in that great devouring, self-devouring French Revolution; to tame it, so that its intrinsic purpose can be made good, that it may become organic, and be able to live among other organisms and formed things, not as a wasting destruction alone: is not this still what he partly aimed at, as the true purport of his life; nay what he actually managed to do? Through Wagrams, Austerlitzes; triumph after triumph, — he triumphed so far. There was an eye to see in this man, a soul to dare and do. He rose naturally to be the King. All men saw that he was such. The common soldiers used to say on the march: “These babbling374 Avocats, up at Paris; all talk and no work! What wonder it runs all wrong? We shall have to go and put our Petit Caporal there!” They went, and put him there; they and France at large. Chief-consulship, Emperorship, victory over Europe; — till the poor Lieutenant375 of La Fere, not unnaturally376, might seem to himself the greatest of all men that had been in the world for some ages.
But at this point, I think, the fatal charlatan-element got the upper hand. He apostatized from his old faith in Facts, took to believing in Semblances; strove to connect himself with Austrian Dynasties, Popedoms, with the old false Feudalities which he once saw clearly to be false; — considered that he would found “his Dynasty” and so forth; that the enormous French Revolution meant only that! The man was “given up to strong delusion377, that he should believe a lie;” a fearful but most sure thing. He did not know true from false now when he looked at them, — the fearfulest penalty a man pays for yielding to untruth of heart. Self and false ambition had now become his god: self-deception once yielded to, all other deceptions378 follow naturally more and more. What a paltry patchwork379 of theatrical paper-mantles, tinsel and mummery, had this man wrapt his own great reality in, thinking to make it more real thereby! His hollow Pope’s-Concordat, pretending to be a re-establishment of Catholicism, felt by himself to be the method of extirpating380 it, “la vaccine381 de la religion:” his ceremonial Coronations, consecrations by the old Italian Chimera in Notre–Dame, — “wanting nothing to complete the pomp of it,” as Augereau said, “nothing but the half-million of men who had died to put an end to all that”! Cromwell’s Inauguration382 was by the Sword and Bible; what we must call a genuinely true one. Sword and Bible were borne before him, without any chimera: were not these the real emblems383 of Puritanism; its true decoration and insignia? It had used them both in a very real manner, and pretended to stand by them now! But this poor Napoleon mistook: he believed too much in the Dupability of men; saw no fact deeper in man than Hunger and this! He was mistaken. Like a man that should build upon cloud; his house and he fall down in confused wreck, and depart out of the world.
Alas, in all of us this charlatan-element exists; and might be developed, were the temptation strong enough. “Lead us not into temptation”! But it is fatal, I say, that it be developed. The thing into which it enters as a cognizable ingredient is doomed384 to be altogether transitory; and, however huge it may look, is in itself small. Napoleon’s working, accordingly, what was it with all the noise it made? A flash as of gunpowder385 wide-spread; a blazing-up as of dry heath. For an hour the whole Universe seems wrapt in smoke and flame; but only for an hour. It goes out: the Universe with its old mountains and streams, its stars above and kind soil beneath, is still there.
The Duke of Weimar told his friends always, To be of courage; this Napoleonism was unjust, a falsehood, and could not last. It is true doctrine. The heavier this Napoleon trampled on the world, holding it tyrannously down, the fiercer would the world’s recoil386 against him be, one day. Injustice387 pays itself with frightful compound-interest. I am not sure but he had better have lost his best park of artillery388, or had his best regiment389 drowned in the sea, than shot that poor German Bookseller, Palm! It was a palpable tyrannous murderous injustice, which no man, let him paint an inch thick, could make out to be other. It burnt deep into the hearts of men, it and the like of it; suppressed fire flashed in the eyes of men, as they thought of it, — waiting their day! Which day came: Germany rose round him. — What Napoleon did will in the long-run amount to what he did justly; what Nature with her laws will sanction. To what of reality was in him; to that and nothing more. The rest was all smoke and waste. La carriere ouverte aux talens: that great true Message, which has yet to articulate and fulfil itself everywhere, he left in a most inarticulate state. He was a great ebauche, a rude-draught never completed; as indeed what great man is other? Left in too rude a state, alas!
His notions of the world, as he expresses them there at St. Helena, are almost tragical to consider. He seems to feel the most unaffected surprise that it has all gone so; that he is flung out on the rock here, and the World is still moving on its axis. France is great, and all-great: and at bottom, he is France. England itself, he says, is by Nature only an appendage390 of France; “another Isle360 of Oleron to France.” So it was by Nature, by Napoleon–Nature; and yet look how in fact — HERE AM I! He cannot understand it: inconceivable that the reality has not corresponded to his program of it; that France was not all-great, that he was not France. “Strong delusion,” that he should believe the thing to be which is not! The compact, clear-seeing, decisive Italian nature of him, strong, genuine, which he once had, has enveloped391 itself, half-dissolved itself, in a turbid392 atmosphere of French fanfaronade. The world was not disposed to be trodden down underfoot; to be bound into masses, and built together, as he liked, for a pedestal to France and him: the world had quite other purposes in view! Napoleon’s astonishment393 is extreme. But alas, what help now? He had gone that way of his; and Nature also had gone her way. Having once parted with Reality, he tumbles helpless in Vacuity394; no rescue for him. He had to sink there, mournfully as man seldom did; and break his great heart, and die, — this poor Napoleon: a great implement370 too soon wasted, till it was useless: our last Great Man!
Our last, in a double sense. For here finally these wide roamings of ours through so many times and places, in search and study of Heroes, are to terminate. I am sorry for it: there was pleasure for me in this business, if also much pain. It is a great subject, and a most grave and wide one, this which, not to be too grave about it, I have named Hero-worship. It enters deeply, as I think, into the secret of Mankind’s ways and vitalest interests in this world, and is well worth explaining at present. With six months, instead of six days, we might have done better. I promised to break ground on it; I know not whether I have even managed to do that. I have had to tear it up in the rudest manner in order to get into it at all. Often enough, with these abrupt395 utterances thrown out isolated396, unexplained, has your tolerance been put to the trial. Tolerance, patient candor, all-hoping favor and kindness, which I will not speak of at present. The accomplished and distinguished, the beautiful, the wise, something of what is best in England, have listened patiently to my rude words. With many feelings, I heartily397 thank you all; and say, Good be with you all!
The End
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1
heroism
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| n.大无畏精神，英勇 | |
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whatsoever
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| adv.（用于否定句中以加强语气）任何；pron.无论什么 | |
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embodies
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| v.表现( embody的第三人称单数 )；象征；包括；包含 | |
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ward
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| n.守卫，监护，病房，行政区，由监护人或法院保护的人（尤指儿童）；vt.守护，躲开 | |
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questionable
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| adj.可疑的，有问题的 | |
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resolute
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| adj.坚决的，果敢的 | |
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resolutely
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| adj.坚决地，果断地 | |
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impartial
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| adj.(in,to)公正的，无偏见的 | |
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royalty
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| n.皇家，皇族 | |
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faculty
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| n.才能；学院，系；(学院或系的)全体教学人员 | |
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accomplished
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| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
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supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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reverence
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| n.敬畏，尊敬，尊严；Reverence:对某些基督教神职人员的尊称；v.尊敬，敬畏，崇敬 | |
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eloquence
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| n.雄辩；口才，修辞 | |
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machinery
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| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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whit
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| n.一点，丝毫 | |
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precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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behoove
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| v.理应；有益于 | |
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alas
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| int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等) | |
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embodied
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| v.表现( embody的过去式和过去分词 )；象征；包括；包含 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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esteem
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| n.尊敬，尊重；vt.尊重，敬重；把…看作 | |
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wreck
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| n.失事，遇难；沉船；vt.(船等)失事，遇难 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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perpendicular
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| adj.垂直的，直立的；n.垂直线，垂直的位置 | |
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perpendicularity
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| n.垂直，直立；垂直度 | |
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plummet
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| vi.(价格、水平等)骤然下跌；n.铅坠；重压物 | |
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28
ignoble
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| adj.不光彩的，卑鄙的；可耻的 | |
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fatuous
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| adj.愚昧的；昏庸的 | |
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quack
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| n.庸医；江湖医生；冒充内行的人；骗子 | |
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fermenting
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| v.（使）发酵( ferment的现在分词 )；（使）激动；骚动；骚扰 | |
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indigent
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| adj.贫穷的，贫困的 | |
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misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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chaos
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| n.混乱，无秩序 | |
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moulders
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| v.腐朽( moulder的第三人称单数 )；腐烂，崩塌 | |
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virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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violation
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| n.违反(行为)，违背(行为)，侵犯 | |
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obedience
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| n.服从，顺从 | |
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41
woe
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| n.悲哀，苦痛，不幸，困难；int.用来表达悲伤或惊慌 | |
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42
loyalty
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| n.忠诚，忠心 | |
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43
knave
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| n.流氓；（纸牌中的）杰克 | |
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knaveries
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| n.流氓行为( knavery的名词复数 ) | |
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polemic
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| n.争论，论战 | |
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46
Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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47
brazenly
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| adv.厚颜无耻地；厚脸皮地肆无忌惮地 | |
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48
metallic
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| adj.金属的；金属制的；含金属的；产金属的；像金属的 | |
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49
everlasting
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| adj.永恒的，持久的，无止境的 | |
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50
malady
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| n.病，疾病(通常做比喻) | |
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51
grimace
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| v.做鬼脸，面部歪扭 | |
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52
expediency
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| n.适宜；方便；合算；利己 | |
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53
diplomacy
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| n.外交；外交手腕，交际手腕 | |
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54
chimera
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| n.神话怪物；梦幻 | |
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55
chimeras
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| n.（由几种动物的各部分构成的）假想的怪兽( chimera的名词复数 )；不可能实现的想法；幻想；妄想 | |
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56
frightful
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| adj.可怕的；讨厌的 | |
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57
awakened
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| v.（使）醒( awaken的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）觉醒；弄醒；（使）意识到 | |
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celestial
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| adj.天体的；天上的 | |
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sincerity
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| n.真诚，诚意；真实 | |
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60
reigns
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| n.君主的统治( reign的名词复数 )；君主统治时期；任期；当政期 | |
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61
insanity
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| n.疯狂，精神错乱；极端的愚蠢，荒唐 | |
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conversion
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| n.转化，转换，转变 | |
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sect
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| n.派别，宗教，学派，派系 | |
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bedlam
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| n.混乱，骚乱；疯人院 | |
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nonentity
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| n.无足轻重的人 | |
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picturesque
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| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
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axis
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| n.轴，轴线，中心线；坐标轴，基准线 | |
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mariners
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| 海员，水手（mariner的复数形式） | |
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wither
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| vt.使凋谢，使衰退，(用眼神气势等)使畏缩；vi.枯萎，衰退，消亡 | |
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70
withered
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| adj. 枯萎的，干瘪的，（人身体的部分器官）因病萎缩的或未发育良好的 动词wither的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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semblance
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| n.外貌，外表 | |
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plausibility
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| n. 似有道理, 能言善辩 | |
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trump
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| n.王牌，法宝；v.打出王牌，吹喇叭 | |
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doom
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| n.厄运，劫数；v.注定，命定 | |
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laboring
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| n.劳动，操劳v.努力争取(for)( labor的现在分词 )；苦干；详细分析；（指引擎）缓慢而困难地运转 | |
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labor
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| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
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solacing
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| v.安慰，慰藉( solace的现在分词 ) | |
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creeds
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| （尤指宗教）信条，教条( creed的名词复数 ) | |
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conflagration
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| n.建筑物或森林大火 | |
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80
effete
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| adj.无生产力的，虚弱的 | |
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81
forgeries
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| 伪造( forgery的名词复数 )； 伪造的文件、签名等 | |
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adoration
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| n.爱慕，崇拜 | |
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83
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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84
dispensed
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| v.分配( dispense的过去式和过去分词 )；施与；配（药） | |
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graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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86
nay
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| adv.不；n.反对票，投反对票者 | |
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87
inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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88
disorder
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| n.紊乱，混乱；骚动，骚乱；疾病，失调 | |
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89
tragical
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| adj. 悲剧的, 悲剧性的 | |
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90
anarchist
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| n.无政府主义者 | |
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91
anarchy
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| n.无政府状态；社会秩序混乱，无秩序 | |
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92
encumber
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| v.阻碍行动，妨碍，堆满 | |
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93
chaotic
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| adj.混沌的，一片混乱的，一团糟的 | |
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94
missionary
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| adj.教会的，传教(士)的；n.传教士 | |
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95
constrains
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| 强迫( constrain的第三人称单数 )； 强使； 限制； 约束 | |
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96
impelled
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| v.推动、推进或敦促某人做某事( impel的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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97
revolve
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| vi.(使)旋转；循环出现 | |
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98
trampled
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| 踩( trample的过去式和过去分词 )； 践踏； 无视； 侵犯 | |
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99
rebellious
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| adj.造反的，反抗的，难控制的 | |
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100
memorable
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| adj.值得回忆的，难忘的，特别的，显著的 | |
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101
candor
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| n.坦白，率真 | |
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102
semblances
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| n.外表，外观（semblance的复数形式） | |
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103
savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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104
iconoclasts
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| n.攻击传统观念的人( iconoclast的名词复数 )；反对崇拜圣像者 | |
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105
laud
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| n.颂歌；v.赞美 | |
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106
pedant
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| n.迂儒；卖弄学问的人 | |
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107
superstitions
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| 迷信，迷信行为( superstition的名词复数 ) | |
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108
superstition
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| n.迷信，迷信行为 | |
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109
salvation
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| n.（尤指基督）救世，超度，拯救，解困 | |
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110
vehemence
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| n.热切；激烈；愤怒 | |
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111
cramps
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| n. 抽筋, 腹部绞痛, 铁箍 adj. 狭窄的, 难解的 v. 使...抽筋, 以铁箍扣紧, 束缚 | |
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112
heeding
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| v.听某人的劝告，听从( heed的现在分词 ) | |
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113
prudence
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| n.谨慎，精明，节俭 | |
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114
avenged
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| v.为…复仇，报…之仇( avenge的过去式和过去分词 )；为…报复 | |
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115
meritorious
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| adj.值得赞赏的 | |
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116
purport
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| n.意义，要旨，大要；v.意味著，做为...要旨，要领是... | |
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117
pageant
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| n.壮观的游行；露天历史剧 | |
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118
veracity
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| n.诚实 | |
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119
grimaces
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| n.（表蔑视、厌恶等）面部扭曲，鬼脸( grimace的名词复数 )v.扮鬼相，做鬼脸( grimace的第三人称单数 ) | |
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120
utterance
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| n.用言语表达，话语，言语 | |
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121
importunate
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| adj.强求的；纠缠不休的 | |
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122
importunately
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123
exclamations
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| n.呼喊( exclamation的名词复数 )；感叹；感叹语；感叹词 | |
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124
savages
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| 未开化的人，野蛮人( savage的名词复数 ) | |
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125
dignified
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| a.可敬的，高贵的 | |
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126
antagonisms
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| 对抗，敌对( antagonism的名词复数 ) | |
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127
controversy
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| n.争论，辩论，争吵 | |
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128
ushered
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| v.引，领，陪同( usher的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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129
hearty
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| adj.热情友好的；衷心的；尽情的，纵情的 | |
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130
acquit
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| vt.宣判无罪；(oneself)使(自己)表现出 | |
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131
farce
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| n.闹剧，笑剧，滑稽戏；胡闹 | |
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132
futility
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| n.无用 | |
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133
unnatural
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| adj.不自然的；反常的 | |
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134
mantles
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| vt.&vi.覆盖（mantle的第三人称单数形式） | |
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135
gilt
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| adj.镀金的；n.金边证券 | |
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136
bodyguards
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| n.保镖，卫士，警卫员( bodyguard的名词复数 ) | |
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137
trumpets
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| 喇叭( trumpet的名词复数 )； 小号； 喇叭形物； （尤指）绽开的水仙花 | |
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138
suffrage
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| n.投票，选举权，参政权 | |
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139
suffrages
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| （政治性选举的）选举权，投票权( suffrage的名词复数 ) | |
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140
rugged
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| adj.高低不平的，粗糙的，粗壮的，强健的 | |
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141
insinuate
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| vt.含沙射影地说，暗示 | |
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142
disparagement
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| n.轻视，轻蔑 | |
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143
worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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144
diligently
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| ad.industriously;carefully | |
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145
diligent
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| adj.勤勉的，勤奋的 | |
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146
euphemisms
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| n.委婉语，委婉说法( euphemism的名词复数 ) | |
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147
monarchies
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| n. 君主政体, 君主国, 君主政治 | |
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148
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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149
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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150
niches
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| 壁龛( niche的名词复数 )； 合适的位置[工作等]； （产品的）商机； 生态位（一个生物所占据的生境的最小单位） | |
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151
monarchy
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| n.君主，最高统治者；君主政体，君主国 | |
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152
glib
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| adj.圆滑的，油嘴滑舌的 | |
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153
regularity
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| n.规律性，规则性；匀称，整齐 | |
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154
tolerance
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| n.宽容；容忍，忍受；耐药力；公差 | |
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155
confessions
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| n.承认( confession的名词复数 )；自首；声明；（向神父的）忏悔 | |
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156
fanaticism
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| n.狂热，盲信 | |
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157
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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158
annihilated
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|
| v.（彻底）消灭( annihilate的过去式和过去分词 )；使无效；废止；彻底击溃 | |
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159
maker
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| n.制造者，制造商 | |
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160
extremities
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| n.端点( extremity的名词复数 )；尽头；手和足；极窘迫的境地 | |
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161
accusation
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| n.控告，指责，谴责 | |
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162
accusations
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| n.指责( accusation的名词复数 )；指控；控告；（被告发、控告的）罪名 | |
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163
justify
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| vt.证明…正当(或有理)，为…辩护 | |
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164
scarcity
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| n.缺乏，不足，萧条 | |
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165
thereby
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| adv.因此，从而 | |
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166
intelligible
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| adj.可理解的，明白易懂的，清楚的 | |
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167
educe
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| v.引出；演绎 | |
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168
doctrine
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| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
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169
doctrines
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| n.教条( doctrine的名词复数 )；教义；学说；（政府政策的）正式声明 | |
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170
amorphous
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| adj.无定形的 | |
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171
fervid
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| adj.热情的；炽热的 | |
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172
hypocrisy
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| n.伪善，虚伪 | |
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173
unintelligible
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| adj.无法了解的，难解的，莫明其妙的 | |
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174
fatuity
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| n.愚蠢，愚昧 | |
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175
calumny
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| n.诽谤，污蔑，中伤 | |
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176
liar
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| n.说谎的人 | |
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177
liars
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| 说谎者( liar的名词复数 ) | |
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178
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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179
counterfeit
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| vt.伪造，仿造；adj.伪造的，假冒的 | |
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180
calumnious
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| adj.毁谤的，中伤的 | |
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181
joint
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| adj.联合的，共同的；n.关节，接合处；v.连接，贴合 | |
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182
hatred
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| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
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183
betoken
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| v.预示 | |
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184
melancholic
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| 忧郁症患者 | |
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185
temperament
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| n.气质，性格，性情 | |
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186
repents
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| 对（自己的所为）感到懊悔或忏悔( repent的第三人称单数 ) | |
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187
awakening
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| n.觉醒，醒悟 adj.觉醒中的；唤醒的 | |
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188
slough
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| v.蜕皮，脱落，抛弃 | |
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189
eternity
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| n.不朽，来世；永恒，无穷 | |
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190
industrious
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| adj.勤劳的，刻苦的，奋发的 | |
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191
devout
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| adj.虔诚的，虔敬的，衷心的 (n.devoutness) | |
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192
renounced
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| v.声明放弃( renounce的过去式和过去分词 )；宣布放弃；宣布与…决裂；宣布摒弃 | |
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193
persecuted
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| （尤指宗教或政治信仰的）迫害(~sb. for sth.)( persecute的过去式和过去分词 )； 烦扰，困扰或骚扰某人 | |
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194
exhorts
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| n.劝勉者，告诫者，提倡者( exhort的名词复数 )v.劝告，劝说( exhort的第三人称单数 ) | |
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195
redeem
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| v.买回，赎回，挽回，恢复，履行（诺言等） | |
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196
thither
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| adv.向那里；adj.在那边的，对岸的 | |
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197
humble
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| adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低 | |
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198
grievance
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| n.怨愤，气恼，委屈 | |
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199
fens
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| n.（尤指英格兰东部的）沼泽地带( fen的名词复数 ) | |
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200
legitimate
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|
| adj.合法的，合理的，合乎逻辑的；v.使合法 | |
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201
derived
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| vi.起源；由来；衍生；导出v.得到( derive的过去式和过去分词 )；（从…中）得到获得；源于；（从…中）提取 | |
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202
determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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203
participation
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| n.参与，参加，分享 | |
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204
condemnation
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| n.谴责; 定罪 | |
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205
killing
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| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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206
wager
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| n.赌注；vt.押注，打赌 | |
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207
reconciliation
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| n.和解，和谐，一致 | |
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208
vanquished
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| v.征服( vanquish的过去式和过去分词 )；战胜；克服；抑制 | |
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209
apprehensive
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| adj.担心的，恐惧的，善于领会的 | |
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210
negotiations
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| 协商( negotiation的名词复数 )； 谈判； 完成（难事）； 通过 | |
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211
incapable
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| adj.无能力的，不能做某事的 | |
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212
Forsaken
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| adj. 被遗忘的, 被抛弃的 动词forsake的过去分词 | |
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213
forsake
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| vt.遗弃，抛弃；舍弃，放弃 | |
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214
smuggle
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| vt.私运；vi.走私 | |
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215
riotous
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| adj.骚乱的；狂欢的 | |
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216
conclusively
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| adv.令人信服地，确凿地 | |
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217
dilettante
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| n.半瓶醋，业余爱好者 | |
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218
sleek
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| adj.光滑的，井然有序的；v.使光滑，梳拢 | |
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219
horrid
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| adj.可怕的；令人惊恐的；恐怖的；极讨厌的 | |
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220
internecine
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| adj.两败俱伤的 | |
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221
dilettantism
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| n.业余的艺术爱好，浅涉文艺，浅薄涉猎 | |
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222
scouted
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| 寻找，侦察( scout的过去式和过去分词 )； 物色（优秀运动员、演员、音乐家等） | |
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223
sneeringly
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| 嘲笑地，轻蔑地 | |
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224
miraculous
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| adj.像奇迹一样的，不可思议的 | |
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225
talisman
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| n.避邪物，护身符 | |
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226
paltry
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| adj.无价值的，微不足道的 | |
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227
lamentable
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| adj.令人惋惜的，悔恨的 | |
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228
quacks
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| abbr.quacksalvers 庸医，骗子(16世纪习惯用水银或汞治疗梅毒的人)n.江湖医生( quack的名词复数 )；江湖郎中；（鸭子的）呱呱声v.（鸭子）发出嘎嘎声( quack的第三人称单数 ) | |
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229
situated
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| adj.坐落在...的，处于某种境地的 | |
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230
undue
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| adj.过分的；不适当的；未到期的 | |
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231
sham
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| n./adj.假冒(的)，虚伪(的) | |
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232
clattering
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| 发出咔哒声（clatter的现在分词形式） | |
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233
hull
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| n.船身；(果、实等的)外壳；vt.去(谷物等)壳 | |
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234
boundless
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| adj.无限的；无边无际的；巨大的 | |
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235
enveloping
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| v.包围，笼罩，包住( envelop的现在分词 ) | |
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236
logic
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| n.逻辑(学)；逻辑性 | |
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237
ascertaining
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| v.弄清，确定，查明( ascertain的现在分词 ) | |
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238
virtues
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| 美德( virtue的名词复数 )； 德行； 优点； 长处 | |
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239
utterances
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| n.发声( utterance的名词复数 )；说话方式；语调；言论 | |
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240
fervent
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| adj.热的，热烈的，热情的 | |
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241
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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242
devouring
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| 吞没( devour的现在分词 )； 耗尽； 津津有味地看； 狼吞虎咽地吃光 | |
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243
hesitation
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| n.犹豫，踌躇 | |
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244
splendor
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| n.光彩；壮丽，华丽；显赫，辉煌 | |
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245
desolate
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| adj.荒凉的，荒芜的；孤独的，凄凉的；v.使荒芜，使孤寂 | |
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246
perilous
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| adj.危险的，冒险的 | |
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247
prostration
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| n. 平伏, 跪倒, 疲劳 | |
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248
gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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249
apprehend
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| vt.理解，领悟，逮捕，拘捕，忧虑 | |
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250
passionate
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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251
candid
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| adj.公正的，正直的；坦率的 | |
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252
acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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253
behold
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| v.看，注视，看到 | |
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254
abode
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| n.住处，住所 | |
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255
inquiries
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| n.调查( inquiry的名词复数 )；疑问；探究；打听 | |
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256
shuddered
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| v.战栗( shudder的过去式和过去分词 )；发抖；（机器、车辆等）突然震动；颤动 | |
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257
pervert
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| n.堕落者，反常者；vt.误用，滥用；使人堕落，使入邪路 | |
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258
judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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259
judgments
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| 判断( judgment的名词复数 )； 鉴定； 评价； 审判 | |
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260
marsh
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| n.沼泽，湿地 | |
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261
deceptive
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| adj.骗人的，造成假象的，靠不住的 | |
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262
radical
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| n.激进份子，原子团，根号；adj.根本的，激进的，彻底的 | |
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263
perversion
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| n.曲解；堕落；反常 | |
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264
apprehensions
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| 疑惧 | |
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265
enact
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| vt.制定(法律)；上演，扮演 | |
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266
absurdities
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|
| n.极端无理性( absurdity的名词复数 )；荒谬；谬论；荒谬的行为 | |
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267
perversions
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| n.歪曲( perversion的名词复数 )；变坏；变态心理 | |
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268
prurient
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| adj.好色的，淫乱的 | |
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269
pruriently
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|
| adv.好色地，挑逗性地 | |
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270
morbid
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| adj.病的；致病的；病态的；可怕的 | |
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271
tormented
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| 饱受折磨的 | |
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272
gilding
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| n.贴金箔，镀金 | |
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273
flaunted
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|
| v.炫耀，夸耀( flaunt的过去式和过去分词 )；有什么能耐就施展出来 | |
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274
inanity
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| n.无意义，无聊 | |
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275
scattered
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|
| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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276
boughs
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| 大树枝( bough的名词复数 ) | |
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277
spout
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|
| v.喷出，涌出；滔滔不绝地讲；n.喷管；水柱 | |
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278
promulgate
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|
| v.宣布；传播；颁布（法令、新法律等） | |
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279
promulgation
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| n.颁布 | |
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280
forum
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| n.论坛，讨论会 | |
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281
coveting
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|
| v.贪求，觊觎( covet的现在分词 ) | |
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282
misgivings
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|
| n.疑虑，担忧，害怕；疑虑，担心，恐惧( misgiving的名词复数 )；疑惧 | |
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283
zealous
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|
| adj.狂热的，热心的 | |
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284
dungeons
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| n.地牢( dungeon的名词复数 ) | |
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285
pillories
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|
| n.颈手枷( pillory的名词复数 )v.使受公众嘲笑( pillory的第三人称单数 )；将…示众；给…上颈手枷；处…以枷刑 | |
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286
theocracy
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|
| n.神权政治；僧侣政治 | |
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287
supremely
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| adv.无上地，崇高地 | |
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288
victorious
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|
| adj.胜利的，得胜的 | |
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289
attainable
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| a.可达到的，可获得的 | |
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290
adherents
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|
| n.支持者，拥护者( adherent的名词复数 )；党羽；徒子徒孙 | |
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291
knaves
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| n.恶棍，无赖( knave的名词复数 )；（纸牌中的）杰克 | |
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292
stagnate
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| v.停止 | |
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293
applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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294
impurities
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| 不纯( impurity的名词复数 )； 不洁； 淫秽； 杂质 | |
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295
quench
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| vt.熄灭，扑灭；压制 | |
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296
touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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297
rending
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| v.撕碎( rend的现在分词 )；分裂；（因愤怒、痛苦等而）揪扯（衣服或头发等）；（声音等）刺破 | |
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298
toils
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| 网 | |
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299
toil
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| vi.辛劳工作，艰难地行动；n.苦工，难事 | |
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300
theatrical
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| adj.剧场的，演戏的；做戏似的，做作的 | |
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301
theatricality
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| n.戏剧风格，不自然 | |
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302
pestering
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| 使烦恼，纠缠( pester的现在分词 ) | |
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303
scotch
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|
| n.伤口，刻痕；苏格兰威士忌酒；v.粉碎，消灭，阻止；adj.苏格兰(人)的 | |
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304
highland
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| n.(pl.)高地，山地 | |
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305
uncertainty
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| n.易变，靠不住，不确知，不确定的事物 | |
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306
proceedings
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| n.进程，过程，议程；诉讼(程序)；公报 | |
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307
justified
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| a.正当的，有理的 | |
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308
subdued
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| adj. 屈服的，柔和的，减弱的 动词subdue的过去式和过去分词 | |
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309
providence
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| n.深谋远虑，天道，天意；远见；节约；上帝 | |
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310
wondrous
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| adj.令人惊奇的，奇妙的；adv.惊人地；异乎寻常地；令人惊叹地 | |
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311
odious
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| adj.可憎的，讨厌的 | |
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312
devoured
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|
| 吞没( devour的过去式和过去分词 )； 耗尽； 津津有味地看； 狼吞虎咽地吃光 | |
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313
prate
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| v.瞎扯，胡说 | |
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314
purges
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| 清除异己( purge的名词复数 )； 整肃（行动）； 清洗； 泻药 | |
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315
banish
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| vt.放逐，驱逐；消除，排除 | |
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316
prosper
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| v.成功，兴隆，昌盛；使成功，使昌隆，繁荣 | |
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317
disperse
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| vi.使分散；使消失；vt.分散；驱散 | |
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318
dispersing
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| adj. 分散的 动词disperse的现在分词形式 | |
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319
adjourned
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| （使）休会， （使）休庭( adjourn的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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320
envious
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| adj.嫉妒的，羡慕的 | |
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321
exterminated
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| v.消灭，根绝( exterminate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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322
refractory
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| adj.倔强的，难驾驭的 | |
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323
distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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324
attachment
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| n.附属物，附件；依恋；依附 | |
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325
piety
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| n.虔诚，虔敬 | |
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326
incompetent
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| adj.无能力的，不能胜任的 | |
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327
juncture
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| n.时刻，关键时刻，紧要关头 | |
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328
vow
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| n.誓(言)，誓约；v.起誓，立誓 | |
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329
grumbling
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| adj. 喃喃鸣不平的, 出怨言的 | |
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330
anomalous
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|
| adj.反常的；不规则的 | |
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331
remarkable
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|
| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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332
rebuke
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| v.指责，非难，斥责 [反]praise | |
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333
pedantries
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| n.假学问，卖弄学问，迂腐( pedantry的名词复数 ) | |
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334
obstinacies
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|
| n.顽固( obstinacy的名词复数 )；顽强；（病痛等的）难治；顽固的事例 | |
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335
inorganic
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| adj.无生物的；无机的 | |
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336
triumphant
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|
| adj.胜利的，成功的；狂欢的，喜悦的 | |
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337
notary
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| n.公证人，公证员 | |
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338
wilfully
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| adv.任性固执地；蓄意地 | |
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339
shrouding
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| n.覆盖v.隐瞒( shroud的现在分词 )；保密 | |
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340
jargon
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| n.术语，行话 | |
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341
imprisoned
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| 下狱，监禁( imprison的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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342
tortuous
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| adj.弯弯曲曲的，蜿蜒的 | |
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343
inane
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|
| adj.空虚的，愚蠢的，空洞的 | |
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344
crabbed
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| adj.脾气坏的；易怒的；（指字迹）难辨认的；（字迹等）难辨认的v.捕蟹( crab的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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345
WHIMS
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| 虚妄，禅病 | |
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346
coerce
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| v.强迫，压制 | |
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347
embarked
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| 乘船( embark的过去式和过去分词 )； 装载； 从事 | |
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348
incessant
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| adj.不停的，连续的 | |
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349
deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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350
sullenly
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| 不高兴地，绷着脸，忧郁地 | |
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351
strife
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| n.争吵，冲突，倾轧，竞争 | |
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352
smoothly
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| adv.平滑地，顺利地，流利地，流畅地 | |
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353
spurn
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| v.拒绝，摈弃；n.轻视的拒绝；踢开 | |
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354
hush
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| int.嘘，别出声；n.沉默，静寂；v.使安静 | |
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355
stilts
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| n.（支撑建筑物高出地面或水面的）桩子，支柱( stilt的名词复数 )；高跷 | |
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356
stature
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| n.（高度）水平，（高度）境界，身高，身材 | |
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357
valor
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| n.勇气，英勇 | |
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358
portentous
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| adj.不祥的，可怕的，装腔作势的 | |
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359
strictly
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| adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地 | |
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360
isle
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| n.小岛，岛 | |
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361
instinctive
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| adj.(出于)本能的；直觉的；(出于)天性的 | |
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362
atheistic
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| adj.无神论者的 | |
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363
entanglements
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| n.瓜葛( entanglement的名词复数 )；牵连；纠缠；缠住 | |
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364
steward
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| n.乘务员，服务员；看管人；膳食管理员 | |
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365
demonstration
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| n.表明，示范，论证，示威 | |
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366
tassels
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| n.穗( tassel的名词复数 )；流苏状物；（植物的）穗；玉蜀黍的穗状雄花v.抽穗， （玉米）长穗须( tassel的第三人称单数 )；使抽穗， （为了使作物茁壮生长）摘去穗状雄花；用流苏装饰 | |
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367
functionary
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| n.官员；公职人员 | |
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368
followers
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| 追随者( follower的名词复数 )； 用户； 契据的附面； 从动件 | |
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369
implements
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| n.工具( implement的名词复数 )；家具；手段；[法律]履行（契约等）v.实现( implement的第三人称单数 )；执行；贯彻；使生效 | |
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370
implement
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| n.(pl.)工具，器具；vt.实行，实施，执行 | |
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371
democrat
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| n.民主主义者，民主人士；民主党党员 | |
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372
rabble
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| n.乌合之众，暴民；下等人 | |
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373
bridle
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| n.笼头，束缚；vt.抑制，约束；动怒 | |
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374
babbling
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| n.胡说，婴儿发出的咿哑声adj.胡说的v.喋喋不休( babble的现在分词 )；作潺潺声（如流水）；含糊不清地说话；泄漏秘密 | |
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375
lieutenant
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| n.陆军中尉，海军上尉；代理官员，副职官员 | |
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376
unnaturally
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| adv.违反习俗地；不自然地；勉强地；不近人情地 | |
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377
delusion
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| n.谬见，欺骗，幻觉，迷惑 | |
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378
deceptions
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| 欺骗( deception的名词复数 )； 骗术，诡计 | |
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379
patchwork
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| n.混杂物；拼缝物 | |
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380
extirpating
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| v.消灭，灭绝( extirpate的现在分词 )；根除 | |
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381
vaccine
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| n.牛痘苗，疫苗；adj.牛痘的，疫苗的 | |
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382
inauguration
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| n.开幕、就职典礼 | |
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383
emblems
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| n.象征，标记( emblem的名词复数 ) | |
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384
doomed
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| 命定的 | |
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385
gunpowder
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| n.火药 | |
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386
recoil
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| vi.退却，退缩，畏缩 | |
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387
injustice
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| n.非正义，不公正，不公平，侵犯（别人的）权利 | |
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388
artillery
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| n.(军)火炮，大炮；炮兵(部队) | |
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389
regiment
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| n.团，多数，管理；v.组织，编成团，统制 | |
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390
appendage
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| n.附加物 | |
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391
enveloped
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| v.包围，笼罩，包住( envelop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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392
turbid
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| adj.混浊的，泥水的，浓的 | |
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393
astonishment
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| n.惊奇，惊异 | |
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394
vacuity
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| n.(想象力等)贫乏，无聊，空白 | |
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395
abrupt
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| adj.突然的，意外的；唐突的，鲁莽的 | |
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396
isolated
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| adj.与世隔绝的 | |
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397
heartily
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| adv.衷心地，诚恳地，十分，很 | |
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