But whilst thus everything recommends simplicity and temperance of action; the utmost directness, the positive degree, we mean thereby that “rightly to be great is not to stir without great argument.” Whenever the true objects of action appear, they are to be heartily sought. Enthusiasm is the height of man; it is the passing from the human to the divine. The superlative is as good as the positive, if it be alive. If man loves the conditioned, he also loves the unconditioned. We don’t wish to sin on the other side, and to be purists, nor to check the invention of wit or the sally of humor. ’Tis very different, this weak and wearisome lie, from the stimulus to the fancy which is given by a romancing talker who does not mean to be exactly taken,--like the gallant skipper who complained to his owners that he had pumped the Atlantic Ocean three times through his ship on the passage, and ’twas common to strike seals and porpoises in the hold. Or what was similarly asserted of the late Lord Jeffrey, at the Scottish bar,--an attentive auditor declaring on one occasion after an argument of three hours, that he had spoken the whole English language three times over in his speech. The objection to unmeasured speech is its lie. All men like an impressive fact. The astronomer shows you in his telescope the nebula of Orion, that you may look on that which is esteemed the farthest-off land in visible nature. At the Bank of England they put a scrap of paper that is worth a million pounds sterling into the hands of the visitor to touch. Our travelling is a sort of search for the superlatives or summits of art,--much more the real wonders of power in the human form. The arithmetic of Newton, the memory of Magliabecchi or Mirandola, the versatility of Julius Cæsar, the concentration of Bonaparte, the inspiration of Shakspeare, are sure of commanding interest and awe in every company of men. The superlative is the excess of expression. We are a garrulous, demonstrative kind of creatures, and cannot live without much outlet for all our sense and nonsense. And fit expression is so rare that mankind have a superstitious value for it, and it would seem the whole human race agree to value a man precisely in proportion to his power of expression; and to the most expressive man that has existed, namely, Shakspeare, they have awarded the highest place.