HERO-WORSHIP AND PATRIOTISM. [To TRIO EDITOR OF TRH " SPECTATOR:1
SIR,—The extractel am venturing to send you on the subject of hero-worship and patriotism are, from a. commonplace-book of, the late Dr.; S. Cheetham, Archdeacon of Rochester. • The extract from Mrs. Austin and ,his Own remarks are dated 1857, and as they seeul strangely applicable to the thoughts and conditions of the present tune, I thought' you might possibly consider them of sufficient interest for publication in
"'The people have always a strong feeling of their own.helpless- nous. It -is not among the masses that any confidence in masses' is to be found ;. they invariably fix their confidence, hope, and love —,often, alas! liow,blindly—upon an individual; from his genius and conduct they expect their own safety. Not to mention the well-known legends of Arthur, and Frederic Barbarossa, we may quote the less familiar story of • Marco, the Servian hero
]ila mace he threw, into the.. sea—an inheritance, for the future Er , with the rise of that mace, are connected the deliverance of his country from the Turks, its restoration to Christianity, and the freedom and. independence of his brethren." —Mrs. AUSTIN, Germany, 1700-1814.
"There is something natural and touching. in tho masses in a country like Germany, untrained for combined political action,
longing for a ' hero' to deliver them ; but ,what is to be said of men, young men,,who in a free country like England, fold their arms, and long for a hero' to disentangle the knots which they will not touch with one of their fingers ? No doubt a Cromwell is.a grand speotacle. Even a brazen-faced' Napoleon cuts with ready sword. many a Gordian knot -which binds the soul in old,
4ngled States. But surely, the vigorous despotism of a Cromwell net so pleasant to contemplate as 'A laud of settled government, A land of just aud old renown, -Where freedom,broadem i slowly flown From precedent to precedent.'
Mr. 'Carlyle, I am afraid, with all his excellencies, and his manly hatred of shams, has done much to foster this inert disposition.
Itis. admiration of men prevents.,his admiring the steady, but comparatively slow, self-development,of a great nation ; be sees the Parliamentary system only on its ridiculous side= the forty- thousandth part of a master of tongue-fence in the national palaver,' that is his.notion of representative government. While
he,carefully glosses over the faults of Cromwell, he mentions the uncompromising equity of &hien almost with contempt. I confess the latter is one of, my heroes ; his unswerving respect for law and justice in the midst of so wild a turmoil surely deserves our highest respect. One cannot hut feel that if the King's advisers
had been such as Selden, and if the King himself could possibly he been trusted, much blood might have been spared."—S. C., August, 1857.
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