reproach. The man who can make plain to the many the thought of the one, who can enable them to hear, each in his own tongue, the words of wonder (which are the works of wonder) such a man, to fulfil his mission, must be endued with a double gift of insight, wisdom, and sympathy. For he must be able to think and feel, and speak, not in one world, but in two. He must be akin to genius, the genius of the poets, prophets and sages of our race, on the one hand, and akin to poor commonplace humanity on the other. And he must be able to express the mind and the emotion of the immortals in the bare and broken speech that belongs to the creatures of a day. That was what Dawson did for thousands of unlettered men and women. And as they listened their eyes were opened to the glory of the world; Hesperus with the host of heaven came. And all creation widened on their view. There is another service that Dawson rendered in broadening thought and sympathy to which I must refer in passing. When he began his public work, the average Englishman, still under the influence of the reaction that followed the French Revolution and the wars of Napoleon, knew little, and cared less, about the movements for liberty and enlightenment in other lands. He believed that freedom was good for Britons, and that " Britons never should be slaves." But as for other nations "the nations not so blest as we "—he was not quite sure that they were fit for freedom, or that they could be trusted to use freedom if they got it.
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