* * * * * Man-worship is as universal a practice as that of the higher sort of religion. As men everywhere adore some supposed agents of unseen things, they are, in like manner, disposed to do homage to what is venerable when it is presented to their eyes in the actions of a living man. This man-worship is one of the most honourable and one of the most hopeful circumstances in the mind of the race. An individual here and there may scoff at the credulity of others, and profess unbelief in human virtue; but no society has ever yet wanted faith in man. Every community has its saints, its heroes, its sages,--whose tombs are visited, whose deeds are celebrated, whose words have become the rules by which men live. Now, the moral taste of a people is nowhere more clearly shown than in its choice of idols. Of these idols there are two kinds;--those whose divinity is confirmed by the lapse of time, like Gustavus Adolphus among the Swedes, Tell in Switzerland, Henri IV. among the French, and Washington among the Americans; and those who are still living, and upon whose daily doings a multitude of eyes are fixed. Those of the first class reign singly; their uncontested sway is over national character, as well as the affections of individual minds; and from their character may that of the whole people be, in certain respects, inferred. Who supposes that the Swiss would have been the same as they are, if Tell's character and deeds could have been hidden in oblivion from the moment those deeds were done? What would the Americans have been now if every impression of Washington could have been effaced from their minds fifty years ago? This is not the place in which to enlarge on the power--the greatest power we know of--which man exercises over men through their affections; but it is a fact which the observer should keep ever in view. The existence of a great man is one of those gigantic circumstances,--one of those national influences,--which have before been mentioned as modifying the conscience--the feelings about right and wrong--in a whole people. The pursuits of a nation for ever may be determined by the fact of the great man of five centuries being a poet, a warrior, a statesman, or a maritime adventurer. The morals of a nation are influenced to all eternity by the great man's being ambitious or moderate, passionate or philosophical, licentious or self-governed. Certain lofty qualities he must have, or he could not have attained greatness,--energy, perseverance, faith, and consequently earnestness. These are essential to his immortality; upon the others depends the quality of his influence; and upon these must the observer of the present generation reflect.