poetic insight. The World, Man, human Compassion; all wholly miraculous to Mahomet. (59.)-His religion did not succeed by 'being easy: None can. The sensual part of it not of Mahomet's making. He himself, frugal; patched his own clothes; proved a hero in a rough actual trial of twenty-three years. Traits of his generosity and resignation. His total freedom from cant. (64.)-His moral precepts not always of the superfinest sort; yet is there always a tendency to good in them. His Heaven and Hell sensual, yet not altogether so. Infinite Nature of Duty. The evil of sensuality, in the slavery to pleasant things, not in the enjoyment of them. Mahometanism a religion heartily believed. To the Arab Nation it was as a birth from darkness into light: Arabia first became alive by means of it. (67.)

LECTURE III.

THE HERO AS POET. DANTE; SHAKSPEARE.

The Hero as Divinity or Prophet, inconsistent with the modern progress of science: The Hero Poet, a figure common to all ages. All Heroes at bottom the same; the different sphere constituting the grand distinction: Examples. Varieties of aptitude. (p. 73.)-Poet and Prophet meet in Vates: Their Gospel the same, for the Beautiful and the Good are one. All men somewhat of poets; and the highest Poets far from perfect. Prose, and Poetry or musical Thought. Song a kind of inarticulate unfathomable speech: All deep things are Song. The Hero as Divinity, as Prophet, and then only as Poet, no indication that our estimate of the Great Man is diminishing: The Poet seems to be losing caste, but it is rather that our notions of God are rising higher. (75.)-Shakspeare and Dante, Saints of Poetry. Dante: His history, in his Book and Portrait. His scholastic education, and its fruit of subtlety. His miseries: Love of Beatrice: His marriage not happy. A banished man: Will never return, if to plead guilty be the condition. His wanderings: "Come è duro calle." At the Court of Della Scala. The great soul of Dante, homeless on earth, made its home more and more in Eternity. His mystic, unfathomable Song. Death: Buried at Ravenna. (80.)-His Divina Commedia a Song: Go deep enough, there is music everywhere. The sincerest of Poems: It has all been as if molten, in the hottest furnace of his soul. Its Intensity, and Pictorial power. The three parts make-up the true Unseen World of the Middle Ages: How the Christian Dante felt Good and Evil to be the two polar elements of this Creation. Paganism and Christianism. (84.)-Ten silent centuries found a voice in

Dante. The thing that is uttered from the inmost parts of a man's soul differs altogether from what is uttered by the outer. The 'uses' of Dante: We will not estimate the Sun by the quantity of gas it saves us. Mahomet and Dante contrasted. Let a man do his work; the fruit of it is the care of Another than he. (91.)-As Dante embodies musically the Inner Life of the Middle Ages, so does Shakspeare embody the Outer Life which grew therefrom. The strange outbudding of English Existence which we call 'Elizabethan Era.' Shakspeare the chief of all Poets: His calm, all-seeing Intellect: His marvellous Portrait-painting. (94.)-The Poet's first gift, as it is all men's, that he have intellect enough,-that he be able to see. Intellect the summary of all human gifts: Human intellect and vulpine intellect contrasted. Shakspeare's instinctive unconscious greatness: His works a part of Nature, and partaking of her inexhaustible depth. Shakspeare greater than Dante; in that he not only sorrowed, but triumphed over his sorrows. His mirthfulness, and genuine overflowing love of laughter. His Historical Plays, a kind of National Epic. The Battle of Agincourt: A noble Patriotism, far other than the 'indifference' sometimes ascribed to him. His works, like so many windows, through which we see glimpses of the world that is in him. (101.)-Dante the melodious Priest of Middle-Age Catholicism: Out of this Shakspeare too there rises a kind of Universal Psalm, not unfit to make itself heard among still more sacred Psalms. Shakspeare an unconscious Prophet;' and therein greater and truer than Mahomet. This poor Warwickshire Peasant worth more to us than a whole regiment of highest Dignitaries: Indian Empire, or Shakspeare,-which? An English King, whom no time or chance can dethrone: A rallying-sign and bond of brotherhood for all Saxondom: Wheresoever English men and women are, they will say to one another, 'Yes, this Shakspeare is ours!" (103.)

THE HERO AS PRIEST.

LECTURE IV.

LUTHER; REFORMATION: KNOX; PURITANISM.

The Priest a kind of Prophet; but more familiar, as the daily enlightener of daily life. A true Reformer he who appeals to Heaven's invisible justice against Earth's visible force. The finished Poet often a symptom that his epoch itself has reached perfection, and finished. Alas, the battling Reformer, too, is at times a needful and inevitable phenomenon: Offences do accumulate, till they become insupportable. Forms of Belief, modes of life must perish; yet the Good of the Past survives, an everlasting possession for us all. (p. 107.)—Idols, or visi

ble recognised Symbois, common to all Religions: Hateful only when insincere: The property of every Hero, that he come back to sincerity, to reality: Protestantism and private judgment.' No living com munion possible among men who believe only in hearsays. The Hero Teacher, who delivers men out of darkness into light. Not abolition of Hero-worship does Protestantism mean; but rather a whole World of Heroes, of sincere, believing men. (112.)-Luther; his obscure, seemingly-insignificant birth. His youth schooled in adversity and stern reality. Becomes a Monk. His religious despair: Discovers a Latin Bible: No wonder he should venerate the Bible. He visits Rome. Meets the Pope's fire by fire. At the Diet of Worms: The greatest moment in the modern History of men. (118.)—The Wars that followed are not to be charged to the Reformation. The Old Religion once true: The cry of 'No Popery' foolish enough in these days. Protestantism not dead: German Literature and the French Revolu→ tion rather considerable signs of life! (125.)-How Luther held the sovereignty of the Reformation and kept Peace while he lived. His written Works: Their rugged homely strength: His dialect became the language of all writing. No mortal heart to be called braver, ever lived in that Teutonic Kindred, whose character is valour: Yet a most gentle heart withal, full of pity and love, as the truly valiant heart ever is: Traits of character from his Table-Talk: His daughter's Deathbed: The miraculous in Nature. His love of Music. His Portrait. (127.)-Puritanism the only phasis of Protestantism that ripened into a living faith: Defective enough, but genuine. Its fruit in the world. The sailing of the Mayflower from Delft Haven the beginning of American Saxondom. In the history of Scotland properly but one epoch of world-interest, the Reformation by Knox: A 'nation of heroes;' a believing nation. The Puritanism of Scotland became that of England, of New England. (132.)—Knox' guilty' of being the bravest of all Scotchmen: Did not seek the post of Prophet. At the siege of St. Andrew's Castle. Emphatically a sincere man. A Galleyslave on the River Loire. An Old-Hebrew Prophet, in the guise of an Edinburgh Minister of the Sixteenth Century. (134.)-Knox and Queen Mary: 'Who are you, that presume to school the robles and sovereign of this realm?' 'Madam, a subject born within the same.' His intolerance-of falsehoods and knaveries. Not a mean acrid man; else he had never been virtual President and Sovereign of Scotland. His unexpected vein of drollery: A cheery social man; practical, cautious-hopeful, patient. His devout imagination' of a Theocracy, or Government of God. Hildebrand wished a Theocracy; Cromwell wished it, fought for it: Mahomet attained it. In one form or other, it is the one thing to be struggled for. (137.

LECTURE V.

THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS.

JOHNSON, ROUSSEAU, BURNS.

The Hero as Man of Letters altogether a product of these new ages: A Heroic Soul in very strange guise. Literary men; genuine and spurious. Fichte's 'Divine Idea of the World:' His notion of the True Man of Letters. Goethe, the Pattern Literary Hero. (p. 143.)—The disorganised condition of Literature, the summary of all other modern disorganisations. The Writer of a true Book our true modern Preacher. Miraculous influence of Books: The Hebrew Bible. Books are now our actual University, our Church, our Parliament. With Books, Democracy is inevitable. Thought the true thaumaturgic influence, by which man works all things whatsoever. (147.)—Organisation of the 'Literary Guild:' Needful discipline; 'priceless lessons' of Poverty. The Literary Priesthood, and its importance to society. Chinese Literary Governors. Fallen into strange times; and strange things need. to be speculated upon. (153.)—An age of Scepticism: The very possibility of Heroism formally abnegated. Benthamism an eyeless Heroism. Scepticism, Spiritual Paralysis, Insincerity: Heroes gone-out; Quacks come-in. Our brave Chatham himself lived the strangest mimetic life all along. Violent remedial revulsions: Chartisms, French Revolutions: The Age of Scepticism passing away. Let each Man look to the mending of his own Life. (157.)-Johnson one of our Great English Souls. His miserable Youth and Hypochondria: Stubborn Selfhelp. His loyal submission to what is really higher than himself. How he stood by the old Formulas: Not less original for that. Formulas; their Use and Abuse. Johnson's unconscious sincerity. His Twofold Gospel, a kind of Moral Prudence and clear Hatred of Cant. His writings sincere and full of substance. Architectural nobleness of his Dictionary. Boswell, with all his faults, a true hero-worshipper of a true Hero. (164.)-Rousseau a morbid, excitable, spasmodic man; intense rather than strong. Had not the invaluable 'talent of Silence.' His Face, expressive of his character. His Egoism: Hungry for the praises of men. His books: Passionate appeals, which did once more struggle towards Reality: A Prophet to his Time; as he could, and as the Time could. Rosepink, and artificial bedizenment. Fretted, exasperated, till the heart of him went mad: He could be cooped, starving, into garrets; laughed at as a maniac; but he could not be hindered from setting the world on fire. (170.) - Burns a genuine Hero, in a withered, unbelieving, secondhand Century. The largest soul of all the British lands, came among us in the shape of a hard-handed Scottish Peasant. His heroic Father and Mother, and their sore struggle through life. His rough untutored dialect: Affectionate joyousness

His writings a poor fragment of him. His conversational gifts: High duchesses and low ostlers alike fascinated by him. (173.)—Resemblance between Burns and Mirabeau. Official Superiors: The greatest 'thinking-faculty' in this land superciliously dispensed with. Heroworship under strange conditions. The notablest phasis of Burns's history his visit to Edinburgh. For one man who can stand prosperity, there are a hundred that will stand adversity. Literary Lionism. (176.)

THE HERO AS KING.

LECTURE VI.

CROMWELL, NAPOLEON: MODERN REVOLUTIONISM.

The King the most important of Great Men; the summary of all the various figures of Heroism. To enthrone the Ablest Man, the true business of all Social procedure: The Ideal of Constitutions. Tolerable and intolerable approximations. Divine Rights and Diabolic Wrongs. (p. 181.)-The world's sad predicament; that of having its Able-Man to seek, and not knowing in what manner to proceed about it. The era of Modern Revolutionism dates from Luther. The French Revolution no mere act of General Insanity: Truth clad in hell-fire; the Trump of Doom to Plausibilities and empty Routine. The cry of 'Liberty and Equality' at bottom the repudiation of sham Heroes. Hero-worship exists forever and everywhere; from divine adoration down to the common courtesies of man and man: The soul of Order, to which all things, Revolutions included, work. Some Cromwell or Napoleon the necessary finish of a Sansculottism. The manner in which Kings were made, and Kingship itself first took rise. (184.) — Puritanism a section of the universal war of Belief against Make-believe. Laud a weak ill-starred Pedant; in his spasmodic vehemence heeding no voice of prudence, no cry of pity. Universal necessity for true Forms: How to distinguish between True and False. The nakedest Reality preferable to any empty Semblance, however dignified. (188.)—The work of the Puritans. The Sceptical Eighteenth century, and its constitutional estimate of Cromwell and his associates. No wish to disparage such characters as Hampden, Eliot, Pym; a most constitutional, unblamable, dignified set of men. The rugged outcast Cromwell, the man of them all in whom one still finds human stuff. The One thing worth revolting for. (191.)-Cromwell's 'hypocrisy,' an impossible theory. His pious Life as a Farmer until forty years of age. His public successes honest successes of a brave man. His participation in the King's death no ground of condemnation. His eye for facts no hypocrite's gift. His Ironsides the embodiment of this insight