designated for historical reputation, and the fee of fame, must have something that really distinguishes him from his fellows. Affectation and pretension can never accomplish a permanent name. There is no such thing as being great by accident, and enjoying fame without good reason therefor. Weak men may sometimes make undue noise, and occupy for a little while eminences to which they do not belong; but the sober judgment of mankind soon passes upon the pretender, and reduces him to his proper position. It is the certain and inevitable law of history. Mind, like water, will find its level. We may appear to live in a great confusion of names, amid disordered currents of popular fame, in storms of unjust and turbulent opinion; but after all, we may be sure that there is an ultimate order, that the reputations of men will be finally assigned them by exact rules, and that those only will enter the temple of History who have real titles, by extraordinary virtues or by extraordinary vices, to its places.
That excellence which men entitle Greatness, so far from being any peculiar occasion of confusion of mind, may be readily subjected to analysis, and the classes of fame be separated, with reference to the qualities which obtain it. In the first place, we have a distinction among mankind, and a title to fame in the rare possession of genius. The subtile excellence of mind that bears this name is difficult of definition. But its characteristics are easily recognized and unfailing. We call him the man of genius, who, by a quality or gift superiour to reason, reaches the truth, seizes upon it without the intermediate process by which the ordinary man arrives at it; obtains conclusions by the flashes of intuition; perceives things by a subtile sense in which truth is discovered without the formula of an argument, and almost without the consciousness of a mental operation. It is for the metaphysician to attempt the definition of this rare quality of mind, and determine the relations between reason and intuition. But from what we have said of the characteristics of genius we may readily recognize it: the rapidity of its action, the brilliancy of its execution, the intellectual certainty of all its plans, the directness of its methods, and the decisive air of its manners are peculiar, and cannot escape notice. There is another peculiarity of genius. It is that its particular employment, the department in which it displays itself, is determined by accident; that it is universal in its application,