In personal appearance, he was well-calculated to retain the authority intrusted to him by such men. He was, in fact, an epitome of all the physical qualities which distinguished the rugged people of the west: and between these and the moral and intellectual, there is an invariable correspondence--as if the spirit within had moulded its material encasement to the planes and angles of its own "form and pressure."
National form and feature are the external marks of national character, stamped more or less distinctly in different individuals, but, in the aggregate, perfectly correspondent and commensurate. The man, therefore, who possesses the national traits of character in their best development, will be, also, the most faithful representative of his race in physical characteristics. At some periods, there are whole classes of these types; and if there be any _one_ who embodies the character more perfectly than all others, the tranquillity of the age is not calculated to draw him forth. But in all times of trouble--of revolution or national ferment--the perfect Man-emblem is seen to rise, and (which is more to the purpose) is sure to stand at the head of his fellows: for he who best represents the character of his followers, becomes, by God's appointment, their leader. To this extent, the _vox populi_ is the _vox Dei_; and the unfailing success of every such man, throughout his appointed term, is the best possible justification of the choice.
What was Washington, for example, but an epitome of the steady and noble qualities combined of cavalier and puritan, which were then coalescing in the American character? And what more perfect correspondence could be conceived between the moral and intellectual and the physical outlines? What was Cromwell but _the Englishman_, not only of his own time, but of all times? And the testimony of all who saw him, what is it, but that a child, who looked upon him, could not fail to see, in his very lineaments, the great and terrible man he was? And Napoleon, was he aught but an abridgment of the French nation, the sublimate and "proof" essence of French character? Not one, of all the great men of history, has possessed, so far as we know, a physical constitution more perfectly representing, even in its advancing grossness, both the strength and weakness of the people he led.