have passed or changed, over the rivalries of States, the ambitions and enmities of men, the shining deeds and the base deeds that make up history, that we are enabled to see what remains, what is permanent.  Perhaps the chief result left to the world out of a period of heroic exertion, of passion and struggle and accumulation, is a sheaf of poems, or the record by a man of letters of some admirable character.  Spain filled a large place in the world in the sixteenth century, and its influence upon history is by no means spent yet; but we have inherited out of that period nothing, I dare say, that is of more value than the romance of Don Quixote.  It is true that the best heritage of generation from generation is the character of great men; but we always owe its transmission to the poet and the writer.  Without Plato there would be no Socrates.  There is no influence comparable in human life to the personality of a powerful man, so long as he is present to his generation, or lives in the memory of those who felt his influence.  But after time has passed, will the world, will human life, that is essentially the same in all changing conditions, be more affected by what Bismarck did or by what Goethe said?

We may without impropriety take for an illustration of the comparative value of literature to human needs the career of a man now living.  In the opinion of many, Mr. Gladstone is the greatest Englishman of this age.  What would be the position of the British empire, what would be the tendency of English politics and society without him, is a matter for speculation.  He has not played such a role for England and its neighbors as Bismarck has played for Germany and the Continent, but he has been one of the most powerful influences in molding English action.  He is the foremost teacher.  Rarely in history has a nation depended more upon a single man, at times, than the English upon Gladstone, upon his will, his ability, and especially his character.  In certain recent crises the thought of losing him produced something like a panic in the English mind, justifying in regard to him, the hyperbole of Choate upon the death of Webster, that the sailor on the distant sea would feel less safe—­as if a protecting providence had been withdrawn from the world.  His mastery of finance and of economic problems, his skill in debate, his marvelous achievements in oratory, have extorted the admiration of his enemies.  There is scarcely a province in government, letters, art, or research in which the mind can win triumphs that he has not invaded and displayed his power in; scarcely a question in politics, reform, letters, religion, archaeology, sociology, which he has not discussed with ability.  He is a scholar, critic, parliamentarian, orator, voluminous writer.  He seems equally at home in every field of human activity—­a man of prodigious capacity and enormous acquirements.  He can take up, with a turn of the hand, and always with vigor, the cause of the Greeks, Papal power,