atriot may have flashed the blaze of his torch too
strongly on eyes so long trained to the twilight of the dungeon. The
leader of this enterprise himself, like the first discoverer of fire,
may have brought wrath upon his own head, and be condemned to have his
vitals gnawed in loneliness and chains; but nothing shall convince
Lafayette that a great work has not been begun for the living race,
for all nations, and for all posterity."

I could not suppress the question--"But when will the experiment be
complete? When will the tree, planted thus in storms, take hold of the
soil? When will the tremendous tillage which begins by clearing with
the conflagration, and ploughing with the earthquake, bring forth the
harvest of peace to the people?"

"These must be the legacy to our children," was the reply, in a grave
and almost contrite tone. "The works of man are rapid only when they
are meant for decay. The American savage builds his wigwam in a week,
to last for a year. The Parthenon took half an age and the treasures
of a people, to last for ever."

We parted for the night--and for thirty years. My impression of this
remarkable man was, that he had more heart than head; that a single
idea had engrossed his faculties, to the exclusion of all others; that
he was following a phantom, with the belief that it was a substantial
form, and that, like the idolaters of old, who offered their children
to their frowning deity, he imagined that the costlier the sacrifice,
the surer it was of propitiation. Few men have been more misunderstood
in his own day or in ours. Lifted to the skies for an hour by popular
adulation, he has been sunk into obscurity ever since by historic
contempt. Both were mistaken. He was the man made for the
time--precisely the middle term between the reign of the nobility and
the reign of the populace. Certainly not the man to "ride on the
whirlwind and direct the storm;" but as certainly altogether superior
to the indolent luxury of the class among whom he was born. Glory and
liberty, the two highest impulses of our common nature, sent him at
two and twenty from the most splendid court of Europe, to the swamps
and snows, the desperate service and dubious battles of America. Eight
years of voyages, negotiations, travels, and exposure to the chances
of the field, proved his energy, and at the age of thirty he had drawn
upon himself the eyes of the world. Here he ought to have rested, or
have died. But the Revol