was both wise and religious, but his feelings habitually
bewildered him. All the images of desolation rushed across his
creative mind. He was "an uprooted tree," a stream whose course was
swallowed up by an earthquake, a wanderer in the wilderness of the
world, a man struck down by a thunderbolt! From those fearful
fantasies, however, the emergency of public affairs soon summoned him
to the exercise of his noble powers; and he gave his country and the
world, perhaps the most powerful, certainly the most superb and
imaginative, of all his works, the fiery pamphlets on the "regicide
peace."

On this unhappy occasion for the condolence of friendship, he received
many tributes; but we cannot help quoting one from the celebrated
Grattan, which, though characterized by the peculiarities of his
style, seems to us a model of tenderness and beauty.

"_August 26, 1794_.

"My Dear Sir,

"May I be permitted to sympathize where I cannot presume to
console.

"The misfortunes of your family are a public care. The late one
is to me a personal loss. I have a double right to affliction,
and to join my grief, and to express my deep and cordial concern
at that hideous stroke which has deprived me of a friend, you of
a son, and your country of a promise that would communicate to
posterity the living blessings of your genius and your virtue.
Your friends may now condole with you, that you should have now
no other prospect of immortality than that which is common to
Cicero and to Bacon; such as never can be interrupted while there
exists the beauty of order, or the love of virtue, and can fear
no death except what barbarity may impose on the globe.

"If the same strength of reason which could persuade any other
man to bear any misfortune, can administer to the proprietor a
few drops of comfort, we may hope that your condition admits of
relief. The greatest possible calamity which can be imposed on
man, we hope may be supported by the greatest human
understanding. For comfort, your friends must refer you to the
exercise of its faculties, and to the contemplation of its
gigantic proportions--_Dura solatia_--of which nothing can
deprive you while you live. And, though death should mow down
every thing about you, and plunder you of your domestic
existence, you would