he should be driven from among men, and made to eat grass like an
ox, to convince him that he was not the equal of the power that
made him.

But fortunately, as I have said, man is a "stranger at home."
Were it not for this, how incomprehensible would be

The ceremony that to great ones 'longs,
The monarch's crown, and the deputed sword,
The marshal's truncheon, and the judge's robe!

How ludicrous would be the long procession and the caparisoned
horse, the gilded chariot and the flowing train, the colours
flying, the drums beating, and the sound of trumpets rending the
air, which after all only introduce to us an ordinary man, no
otherwise perhaps distinguished from the vilest of the ragged
spectators, than by the accident of his birth!

But what is of more importance in the temporary oblivion we are
enabled to throw over the refuse of the body, it is thus we
arrive at the majesty of man. That sublimity of conception which
renders the poet, and the man of great literary and original
endowments "in apprehension like a God," we could not have, if we
were not privileged occasionally to cast away the slough and
exuviae of the body from incumbering and dishonouring us, even as
Ulysses passed over his threshold, stripped of the rags that had
obscured him, while Minerva enlarged his frame, and gave
loftiness to his stature, added a youthful beauty and grace to
his motions, and caused his eyes to flash with more than mortal
fire. With what disdain, when I have been rapt in the loftiest