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CHAPTER XI.

CONCLUSION AND SUMMARY.

We had intended that the chapter just concluded should have been our last; but even while looking through the proof-sheets, a few other things have occurred to us by way of epilogue. There is a reflection forcing itself upon us, that, in spite of all the desolation that has fallen over our planet, in spite of the sensuality of our race, and even commingled with the very sensuality of our race, how much of spirituality there is; for is not all this Biography, this life-writing, is it not all mindwriting, is it not all the developement of a higher than the animal nature? although in truth we have heard of the Biography of birds, and beasts, of rooks and hares! and very interesting we have sometimes found such biographies to be; yet they are principally useful to us from their mere utili

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tarian character; we do not read the presence of the vast spiritual power, we do not find the wonderful action of a soul. All human Biography presents itself to us as the record of a daring being animated by the sense of conscious responsibilities, and by illimitable and determined ambitions. is surely impossible to turn over the pages of Biography, and to believe that the being whose life this is, commenced and terminated his career, as mechanised, hardened, animated clay. It is impossible to give the body of the man much credit for all that was done. The body we feel to be merely the channel through which something loftier than itself acted upon the world. The History of the World is the History of the Spirit-Spirit is all in all; it is the overruling power directing the lines and battalions on the field, and superintending the campaign and the siege; it is the genius of all State policy and cunning; we feel that no possible combination of mere matter could ever produce a Mazarine, a Richelieu, a Wolsey, or a Becket; that Talleyrands and Mirabeaus are but themselves the seen and felt agents of some wonderfully etherial power, to which we give in the body a local habitation and a name." We find that all the forces man can exercise, his powers and sleight of hand, his skull and form of brain, his erect position, his foot and his thumb,-all

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these wonderful distinguishments are the utterances of a hidden power; they are indexes, so to speak; they are not causes, but results; man has them in virtue of something higher; he has a thumb and hand because he can use it; he has a larger brain and more convolved lobes and organizations, because it is intended first to be the residence of more exalted and forcible powers than those which find their residence in the lower orders of animals.

Mind-the history of Mind!-the chronicle of the wonders of the human mind-this is what we may denominate all Biographic Records. If we did not demand that all which meets us should be so sensualised, we might find, very frequently, innumerable biographies where no human word had been spoken. Men write their lives down in their performances, to those who can read them. The Painting is the record of one life, and the Stone of another. Looking at the painting of Salvator Rosa, I must have some idea of the mind of the man; or of Claude, or of Wouvermans, or of Wilkie. Looking at the stone, of Roubillac, or Thorwaldsen, of Flaxman, or of Chantry. These men breathed their minds into these things; and we can read the mind while we gaze; they are written conceptions; and if not the secret of all the value we attach to men's lives, is it not because

we rejoice to find mind alive in the world working, and in attempting, that we love any Biography whatever?

We will revert to a view we expressed in the earlier chapters of this little volume. Why do we take so perennial an interest in Great Men? It is really because they live to reveal to us now the state of the human mind, and of human affections, and human societies in other and past conditions of our world's history. We see one figure dimly shadowed forth to us; one form rises aloft, beyond and above the men of its age. Look at the distant battle-field,—the hosts are lost; we see them swaying, struggling to and fro, beaten down indiscriminate, in one wild medly they pass along together; but see yonder nodding plumes, how brightly the sun shines on yonder helmet; and now they, the poor wrestlers, lift him up, and place him on their shields, and hail him as great; we see him now through them; he is brought nearer to us; but yet, but for those thousands who pass altogether out of our sight, he had been altogether unknown; he is applauded as great, because he impersonates their greatness; they gather round him, they bear him aloft, they hold him up to our view, because he embodies themselves.

This you will perceive to be the case with all

great men of the times even the teachers of men have become great to us, because the time at last dawned when their worth was understood and appreciated. Think of CAMILLUS, the great Roman, and the achievement which makes him, to us, most venerable and memorable.

While the city of Rome was agitated by many disputes, a war arose between the Romans and the Falerians, which again called Camillus into active service. He had laid siege to the city, and was preparing his lines of circumvallation, when a Falerian schoolmaster offered to betray into his hands the children of the Falerian nobility, who had been intrusted to his care. Camillus ordered the traitor to be seized, bound, and whipped back to the city by his own scholars. The Falerians were so struck with his magnanimous refusal to take advantage of treason, that they sent an embassy to Rome, soliciting peace, which they easily obtained.

But the disappointment of the soldiers, who had expected to share the plunder of Falerii, added greatly to the unpopularity of Camillus, and his enemies ventured to accuse him of peculation before the assembly of the people. The rage of parties ran so high, that Camillus resolved not to wait the event of a trial, but went into voluntary exile. He could not forbear uttering an imprecation