A combination and a form, indeed,
Where every god did seem to set his seal
To give the world assurance of a man.
His life was gentle, and the elements
So mixed in him, that nature might stand up
And say to all the world "This was a man!"--Shakspeare.
"What a piece of worke is a man? How Noble in Reason? how
infinite in faculty? in forme and mouing how expresse and admirable? in
Action how like an Angel? in apprehension how like a God? the beauty of
the world, the Paragon of Animals?" This is the exalted panegyric of the
greatest mind so far vouchsafed to our race--this, then, was
Shakspeare's ideal of a true man. Says Emerson: "O rich and various man!
thou palace of sight and sound, carrying in thy senses the morning and
the night, and the unfathomable galaxy; in thy brain the geometry of the
city of God; in thy heart the power of love and the realms of right and
wrong." "Man was sent into the world to be a growing and exhaustless
force," says Chapin; "the world was spread out around him to be seized
and conquered. Realms of infinite truth burst open above him, inviting
him to to tread those shining coasts along which Newton dropped his
plummet, and Herschel sailed,