at least it be matter for happiness or pride to have moved for the first time, and probably for the last, a great man's heart, which (how wide and warm soever it might lie open to its several friends) was barred and locked and straitened and frozen as with threefold ice or triple steel against every touch of the passion for humanity, every breath of the suffering with all unknown who suffer in the world, which binds together all great men of whose genius is akin to loving-kindness and twinborn with mercy, from Jesus even onwards to Mazzini, and from Shelley even backwards to St. John.
Such other men as these we have had with us, and one at least of the mightiest and most beneficent among them abides on earth even to this day. In writing these words I have written as it were at full length the name of Victor Hugo. 'The one living man of genius in all ways unquestionably and immeasurably greater than Mr. Carlyle's is also the one living man who above all others has a right to speak in the name of mercy, which our greatest man of genius has perpetually denounced in his capacity as politician, of justice which in his capacity as historian he has occasionally defied. It is not with hands yet hot from applauding atrocities in the West that our living lord of song would point men's attention towards atrocities in the East; it is not with a tongue yet quivering from the praises of tyranny in the North that he would invoke men's indignation upon tyranny in the South. He did not watch with pleased indifference or tacit assent the assassination of Hungary by
