And vends them forth as knaves vend gilded counters,
Which wise men scorn, and fools accept in payment.
SHAKESPEARE.
None of these rogues and cowards, but Ajax is their fool!
Idem.
That the world has dealt hardly by its heroes, is a truism we need not insist upon at this late day. But whether the world knows who its heroes are, is another question, and one more open to controversy. Now I insist that the world does not know, or else Boanerges Phospher, the Spiritual Professor, would long since have been stoned and persecuted into one of the holy company of saints and martyrs!
There are several kinds of heroism heretofore known among men. There is the fierce, aggressive heroism of the soldier and conqueror—there is the “glib and oily” heroism of the politician—the calm, enduring heroism of the saint—the lofty, death-defying heroism of the patriot; but it remains for modern times to record the brazen heroism of impudence. Impudence, too, has its grades and degrees—its ancient types and its more modern ones—but as they all veil their brassy splendors, merging their separate rays in the central effulgence of our spiritual Colossus, we shall waive their particular enumeration in favor of the individualised impersonation of them all.
Ah, verily—and this is he!—our Spiritual Professor! Born in Yankee-land, of course, the earliest feat of Boanerges Phospher—literally, according to his own account of it—was to pry up a huge stone upon one of the sterile paternal acres: for what purpose, would you suppose? To place his feet upon the soil beneath, because the foot of no other man could have pressed it!
A laudable ambition, truly, but one which, somehow, unluckily, suggests that
“Fools may walk where angels fear to tread!”