a decorous age. It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a
young person,--"Always do what you are afraid to do." A simple manly
character need never make an apology, but should regard its past action
with the calmness of Phocion, when he admitted that the event of the
battle was happy, yet did not regret his dissuasion from the battle.

There is no weakness or exposure for which we cannot find consolation in
the thought--this is a part of my constitution, part of my relation
and office to my fellow-creature. Has nature covenanted with me that I
should never appear to disadvantage, never make a ridiculous figure? Let
us be generous of our dignity as well as of our money. Greatness once
and for ever has done with opinion. We tell our charities, not because
we wish to be praised for them, not because we think they have great
merit, but for our justification. It is a capital blunder; as you
discover when another man recites his charities.

To speak the truth, even with some austerity, to live with some rigor
of temperance, or some extremes of generosity, seems to be an asceticism
which common good-nature would appoint to those who are at ease and in
plenty, in sign that they feel a brotherhood with the great multitude
of suffering men. And not only need we breathe and exercise the soul
by assuming the penalties of abstinence, of debt, of solitude, of
unpopularity,--but it behooves the wise man to look with a bold eye
into those rarer dangers which sometimes invade men, and to familiarize
himself with disgusting forms of disease, with sounds of execration, and
the vision of violent death.

Times of heroism are generally times of terror, but the day never shines
in which this element may not work. The circumstances of man, we say,
are historically somewhat better in this country and at this hour than
perhaps ever before. More freedom exists for culture. It will not now
run against an axe at the first step out of the beaten track of opinion.
But whoso is heroic will always find crises to try his edge. Human
virtue demands her champions and martyrs, and the trial of persecution
always proceeds. It is but the other day that the brave Lovejoy gave
his breast to the bullets of a mob, for the rights of free speech and
opinion, and died when it was better not to live.

I see not any road of perfect peace which a man can walk, but after the
counsel of his own bosom. Let him quit too much association, let him
go home much,