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about, and when in the depths of their souls they have been unable to free themselves from a prudent loathing of the restlessness, emptiness, and noisy wranglings of the essentially politics-practising nations;⁠—supposing such a statesman were to stimulate the slumbering passions and avidities of his people, were to make a stigma out of their former diffidence and delight in aloofness, an offence out of their exoticism and hidden permanency, were to depreciate their most radical proclivities, subvert their consciences, make their minds narrow, and their tastes ‘national’⁠—what! a statesman who should do all this, which his people would have to do penance for throughout their whole future, if they had a future, such a statesman would be great , would he?”⁠—“Undoubtedly!” replied the other old patriot vehemently, “otherwise he could not have done it! It was mad perhaps to wish such a thing! But perhaps everything great has been just as mad at its commencement!”⁠—“Misuse of words!” cried his interlocutor, contradictorily⁠—“strong! strong! Strong and mad! not great!”⁠—The old men had obviously become heated as they thus shouted their “truths” in each other’s faces, but I, in my happiness and apartness, considered how soon a stronger one may become master of the strong, and also that there is a compensation for the intellectual superficialising of a nation⁠—namely, in the deepening of another.