A man thoroughly great has a certain contempt for his kind while he aids them:  their weal or woe are all; their applause—­their blame—­are nothing to him.  He walks forth from the circle of birth and habit; he is deaf to the little motives of little men.  High, through the widest space his orbit may describe, he holds on his course to guide or to enlighten; but the noises below reach him not!  Until the wheel is broken,—­until the dark void swallow up the star,—­it makes melody, night and day, to its own ear:  thirsting for no sound from the earth it illumines, anxious for no companionship in the path through which it rolls, conscious of its own glory, and contented, therefore, to be alone!

But minds of this order are rare.  All ages cannot produce them.  They are exceptions to the ordinary and human virtue, which is influenced and regulated by external circumstance.  At a time when even to be merely susceptible to the voice of fame was a great pre-eminence in moral energies over the rest of mankind, it would be impossible that any one should ever have formed the conception of that more refined and metaphysical sentiment, that purer excitement to high deeds—­that glory in one’s own heart, which is so immeasurably above the desire of a renown that lackeys the heels of others.  In fact, before we can dispense with the world, we must, by a long and severe novitiate—­by the probation of much thought, and much sorrow—­by deep and sad conviction of the vanity of all that the world can give us, have raised our selves—­not in the fervour of an hour, but habitually—­above the world:  an abstraction—­an idealism—­which, in our wiser age, how few even of the wisest, can attain!  Yet, till we are thus fortunate, we know not the true divinity of contemplation, nor the all-sufficing mightiness of conscience; nor can we retreat with solemn footsteps into that Holy of Holies in our own souls, wherein we know, and feel, how much our nature is capable of the self-existence of a God!

But to return to the things and thoughts of earth.  Those considerations, and those links of circumstance, which, in a similar situation have changed so many honest and courageous minds, changed also the mind of Adrian.  He felt in a false position.  His reason and conscience shared in the schemes of Rienzi, and his natural hardihood and love of enterprise would have led him actively to share the danger of their execution.  But this, all his associations, his friendships, his private and household ties, loudly forbade.  Against his order, against his house, against the companions of his youth, how could he plot secretly, or act sternly?  By the goal to which he was impelled by patriotism, stood hypocrisy and ingratitude.  Who would believe him the honest champion of his country who was a traitor to his friends?  Thus, indeed,

     “The native hue of resolution
     Was sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought!”