"his taste by a popularity which would have once "seemed to him misconception, if not an insult. Of

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course Mr. Mill has not suddenly ceased to be a "clever man; but his words now have no more than "their own weight, and that weight is not always 66 great. The false oracle is detected by the false prosody. It is not only the philosophical temper "which is impaired in Mr. Mill, but the logical 66 cogency. The fallacies he has been all his life "exposing he now finds very handy weapons."

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The writers I have quoted so well express what all feel who are interested in the well-being of the literary class, that I need not add one word to their testimony. Mr. Mill's political career will not have been fruitless if it has had the effect of convincing his admirers that the literary character and the politician are not necessarily identical, and of dissipating the injurious notion that philosophers should be kings and kings philosophers.

LITERARY HERO-WORSHIP.

HE present age, often accused of scepticism, shows itself to be, in some respects, fully as credulous as any of its predecessors. Without stopping here to multiply examples in support of this assertion, it will be sufficient to instance the firm belief it displays in the doctrine of hero-worship. Nor is this belief professed merely by the vulgar and illiterate. It is extensively current even among the intellectual and the refined; it has found its way into books; it forms the text of some of the most popular works in our language; it is echoed in every direction; and, in fine, has become so prevalent, that if one should venture to doubt the existence of "great" men, one would be regarded much in the same light as if one were to question the reality of one's own existence, or deny that all men are mortal. "It is natural to

"believe in great men," writes Mr. Emerson. "No "sadder proof can be given by a man of his own "littleness," says Mr. Carlyle, "than disbelief in

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great men-it is the last consummation of un"belief." There can be no doubt, then, of the existence of this belief. It is notorious that public opinion selects certain personages to occupy the highest place in its regard, and upon them confers the title of "great men." And in making out the list of what are termed great men, public opinion appears to be actuated by a spirit of the utmost impartiality. It liberally selects names from almost every country under the sun, esteeming none too remote or too insignificant to furnish a representative. Even China has Confucius; and Switzerland, small as she is, is credited with Tell, notwithstanding that hero labours under the somewhat serious disqualification of never having existed in the flesh. The praise of liberality does not, however, exclusively belong to the nineteenth century. It must be shared with the eighteenth, which was even more lavish in the bestowal of this title. It was with it Voltaire paid his physician, Tronchin; and upon losing Madame Chatelet, as he could not in good French call her grande femme, it is still grand homme (great man) that we find him styling her, when, in writing to the King of Prussia, he says,

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WHAT IS A GREAT MAN?

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"I have lost a friend of five-and-twenty years' standing, a great man who had but one fault"that of being a woman. **

We have now established with certainty the existence of a belief in "great" men; let us next ascertain, if we be able, what is a great man? Let us see what constitutes a great man, and discover wherein he is like ordinary men, and wherein he differs from them.

But it is here, at the very point where the inquiry becomes of some value, that we are fated to meet with disappointment. In former ages no doubt existed as to the meaning of the term. It was conferred only upon a man of exalted social or official rank-the Xerxes, the Alexander, the Cæsar. In ancient Rome, no one could have thought of calling Virgil and Horace great men, because they were poets, even though he entertained a higher opinion than we of their literary merits. The term was confined in its application solely to those who were powerful by reason of their influential relations to the State, or of their social rank. And down so far as to the time of our own Elizabeth it had, I believe, the same confined signification. Thus limited, the term had a just, precise, and well

* Bungener-" Voltaire and his Times."

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known meaning. But now that the traditional and ordinary idea of a great man has been abandoned, and the title indiscriminately and capriciously conferred upon other grounds, it has lost its significance and become utterly unintelligible. Almost everybody professes to believe in great men as decidedly as he believes, say, in sky-rockets. But the basis of his belief in the one case must be essentially different from what it is in the other; for almost everybody knows what a sky-rocket is, can describe one, and is able to recognize one when he sees it; whilst, as to what constitutes a great man, there are irreconcileable varieties of opinion. No two persons will be found to give the same definition of a great man, or (what is the same thing in amount) agree upon those to whom the title shall be applied. Many, affecting catholicity in their views, make out a long list; others, more particular in their choice, select only a few for the honour; while some are so fastidious as to exclude all names but those of two or three of the most famous personages that have ever lived. Nor is this the sole difficulty that besets our inquiry. There is another and a more formidable one. Not only are we presented with a variety of lists, but each list in itself varies in accordance with the different stages of its owner's mental culture. No man pretends to be in possession of a list that is perma