"The man is not of godlike physiognomy, any more than of imposing stature or costume; close-shut mouth with thin lips, prominent jaws and nose, receding brow, by no means of Olympian height; head, however, is of long form, and has superlative gray eyes in it. Not what is called a beautiful man; nor yet, by all appearance, what is called a happy. On the contrary, the face bears evidence of many sorrows, as they are termed, of much hard labour done in this world; and seems to anticipate nothing but more still coming. Quiet stoicism, capable enough of what joy there were, but not expecting any worth mention; great unconscious and some conscious pride, well tempered with a cheery mockery of humour,--are written on that old face; which carries its chin well forward, in spite of the slight stoop about the neck; snuffy nose rather flung into the air under its old cocked hat,--like an old snuffy lion on the watch; and such a pair of eyes as no man or lion or lynx of that century bore elsewhere, according to all the testimony we have."--Carlyle, _History of Frederick the Great_, Bk. I. chap. i. [4] A friend who has been kind enough to read the proofs of this volume takes exception to the rating of Antichrist. The Devil, he maintains, is not at all a clever or profound spirit, though he is exceedingly industrious. The conception of him in the old Mystery Plays, where he figures as a kind of butt, whose elaborate and painfully constructed schemes are continually being upset owing to some ridiculous oversight, or by some trivial accident, is the true Satan; the Miltonic idea is a poetical myth, not in the least borne out by human experience. {53} CHAPTER VI GERMAN MISCALCULATIONS In the world's play-house there are a number of prominent and well-placed seats, which the instinct of veneration among mankind insists on reserving for Super-men; and as mankind is never content unless the seats of the super-men are well filled, 'the Management'--in other words, the press, the publicists, and other manipulators of opinion--have to do the best they can to find super-men to sit in them. When that is impossible, it is customary to burnish up, fig out, and pass off various colourable substitutes whom it is thought, may be trusted to comport themselves with propriety until the curtain falls. But those resplendent creatures whom we know so well by sight and fame, and upon whom all eyes and opera-glasses are directed during the _entr'-actes_, are for the most part not super-men at all, but merely what, in the slang of the box-office, is known as 'paper.' Indeed there have been long periods, even generations, during which the supposed super-men have been wholly 'paper.'