rgetting herself in the sensation and image of Country and of the
human race; and, when she returns and is most restricted and confined,
her dignity consists in the contemplation of a better and more exalted
being, which, though proceeding from herself, she loves and is devoted
to as to another.

In following the stream of these thoughts, I have not wandered from my
course: I have drawn out to open day the truth from its recesses in the
minds of my countrymen.--Something more perhaps may have been done: a
shape hath perhaps been given to that which was before a stirring
spirit. I have shewn in what manner it was their wish that the struggle
with the adversary of all that is good should be maintained--by pure
passions and high actions. They forbid that their noble aim should be
frustrated by measuring against each other things which are
incommensurate--mechanic against moral power--body against soul. They
will not suffer, without expressing their sorrow, that purblind
calculation should wither the purest hopes in the face of all-seeing
justice. These are times of strong appeal--of deep-searching visitation;
when the best abstractions of the prudential understanding give way, and
are included and absorbed in a supreme comprehensiveness of intellect
and passion; which is the perfection and the very being of humanity.

How base! how puny! how inefficient for all good purposes are the tools
and implements of policy, compared with these mighty engines of
Nature!--There is no middle course: two masters cannot be
served:--Justice must either be enthroned above might, and the moral law
take place of the edicts of selfish passion; or the heart of the people,
which alone can sustain the efforts of the people, will languish: their
desires will not spread beyond the plough and the loom, the field and
the fire-side: the sword will appear to them an emblem of no promise; an
instrument of no hope; an object of indifference, of disgust, or fear.
Was there ever--since the earliest actions of men which have been
transmitted by affectionate tradition or recorded by faithful history,
or sung to the impassioned harp of poetry--was there ever a people who
presented themselves to the reason and the imagination, as under more
holy influences than the dwellers upon the Southern Peninsula; as rouzed
more instantaneously from a deadly sleep to a more hopeful wakefulness;
as a mass fluctuating with one motion under the breath of a mightier
wind; a