of his
pretensions as a deliverer, or of his courage and military skill as a
hero. The judgment of the world and of time has fairly set at rest
those specious and hypocritical claims, which, for a season, presumed
to place him on the pedestal with our Washington. We now know that he
was not only a very selfish, but a very ordinary man--not ordinary,
perhaps, in the sense of intellect, for that would be impossible in
the case of one who was so long able to maintain his eminent
position, and to succeed in his capricious progresses, in spite of
inferior means, and a singular deficiency of the heroic faculty. But
his ambition was the vulgar ambition, and, if possible, something
still inferior. It contemplated his personal wants alone; it lacked
all the elevation of purpose which is the great essential of
patriotism, and was wholly wanting in that magnanimity of soul which
delights in the sacrifice of self, whenever such sacrifice promises
the safety of the single great purpose which it professes to desire.
But we are not now to consider Bolivar, the deliverer, as one whose
place in the pantheon has already been determined by the unerring
judgment of posterity. We are to behold him only with those eyes in
which he was seen by the devoted followers to whom he brought, or
appeared to bring, the deliverance for which they yearned. It is with
the eyes of the passionate young girl, La Pola, the beautiful and
gifted child, whose dream of country perpetually craved the republican
condition of ancient Rome, in the days of its simplicity and virtue;
it is with her fancy and admiration that we are to crown the _ideal_
Bolivar, till we acknowledge him, as he appears to her, the Washington
of the Colombians, eager only to emulate the patriotism, and to
achieve like success with his great model of the northern confederacy.
Her feelings and opinions, with regard to the Liberator, were those of
her family. Her father was a resident of Bogota, a man of large
possessions and considerable intellectual acquirements. He gradually
passed from a secret admiration of Bolivar to a warm sympathy with his
progress, and an active support--so far as he dared, living in a city
under immediate and despotic Spanish rule--of all his objects. He
followed with eager eyes the fortunes of the chief, as they fluctuated
between defeat and victory in other provinces, waiting anxiously the
moment when the success and policy of the struggle should bring
deliveranc