inion as to
political or religious creeds, for diversities of taste and education,
there yet remains to the truly humane, wise, and liberal soul, an
instinctive sense of justice, veneration for rectitude, love of the
beautiful and the true, which keeps alive their veneration and quickens
their higher sympathies despite the venom of faction and the blindness
of prejudice; and thus causes the elemental in character to maintain its
lawful sway whatever may be the inferences of partisan logic or the
dicta of personal opinion. Goethe's invaluable rule of judging every
character and work of art by its own law is ever present to their minds,
and they find a satisfaction in the spontaneous tribute of love and
honor to real genius and superior worth, all the more grateful because
there is not entire sympathy of sentiment and creed; their homage and
faith are as disinterested as they are sincere.

An eminent English novelist has indicated with genial emphasis, in one
of his essays, how much more wonderful as a psychological phenomenon is
the clairvoyance of imagination than that ascribed to mesmerism: since,
by the former, writers of genius describe with verisimilitude, and
sometimes with a moral accuracy such as we can scarcely believe to
originate in the creative mind alone, all the traits and phases of a
scene, an event, or a character, the details of which are lost in dim
tradition or evaded by authentic history. Shakspeare is cited as the
memorable example of this intellectual prescience. There is, however,
another species of foresight and insight whereby the logic of events is
anticipated, and great principles embraced before the multitude are
prepared for their adoption; reformers and statesmen are thus in advance
of their age, and through high ethical judgment and the inspiration of
rectitude, see above the clouds of selfishness and beyond the limits of
egotism, into the eternal truth of things. It was this wisdom, sustained
by, if not born of, integrity and disinterestedness, that distinguished
the highest class of our Revolutionary and Constitutional statesmen,
culminating in Washington, and in no one of his contemporaries more
manifest than in John Jay. We have alluded to the comprehensive and
sagacious scope of his various state papers and judicial decisions,
based invariably upon the absolute principles of equity; and the same
traits are as obvious in his correspondence and occasional writings: but
recently there was