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SELF-RELIANCE

like the duke, and assured that he had been insane, owes
its popularity to the fact, that it symbolizes so well the
state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now
and then wakes up, exercises his reason, and finds
himself a true prince.

Our reading is mendicant and sycophantic. In history,
our imagination plays us false. Kingdom and lordship,
power and estate, are a gaudier vocabulary than private
John and Edward in a small house and common day's
work; but the things of life are the same to both; the sum
total of both is the same. Why all this deference to Alfred,
and Scanderbeg, and Gustavus? Suppose they were
virtuous; did they wear out virtue? As great a stake
depends on your private act to-day, as followed their
public and renowned steps. When private men shall act
with original views, the lustre will be transferred from the
actions of kings to those of gentlemen.

The world has been instructed by its kings, who have
so magnetized the eyes of nations. It has been taught by
this colossal symbol the mutual reverence that is due from
man to man. The joyful loyalty with which men have
everywhere suffered the king, the noble, or the great
proprietor to walk among them by a law of his own, make
his own scale of men and things, and reverse theirs, pay
for benefits not with money but with honor, and represent
the law in his person, was the hieroglyphic by which they
obscurely signified their consciousness of their own right
and comeliness, the right of every man.

The magnetism which all original action exerts is
explained when we inquire the reason of self-trust. Who is
the Trustee? What is the aboriginal Self, on which a
universal reliance may be grounded? What is the nature
and power of that science-baffling star, without parallax,
without calculable elements, which shoots a ray of beauty
even into trivial and impure actions, if the least mark of
independence appear? The inquiry leads us to that source,
at once the essence of genius, of virtue, and of life, which

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