moral view, the light of intellectual perception should
shine far in advance of the heat of ethical invective, and an ounce of
characterization is worth a ton of imprecations. Indeed, moral grit,
relatively admirable as it is, partakes of the inherent defect of other
and lower kinds of grit, inasmuch as its force is apt to be as
unsympathetic as it is uncompromising, as ungracious as it is
invincible. It drives rather than draws, cuffs rather than coaxes.
Intolerant of human infirmity, it is likewise often intolerant of all
forms of human excellence which do not square with its own conceptions
of right; and its philanthropy in the abstract is apt to secrete a
subtile misanthropy in the concrete. Brave, unselfish, self-sacrificing,
and flinching from no consequences which its principles may bring upon
itself, it flinches from no consequences which they may bring upon
others; and its attitude towards the laws and customs of instituted
imperfection is almost as sourly belligerent as towards those of
instituted iniquity.

Men of this austere and somewhat crabbed rectitude may be found in every
department of life, but they are most prominent and most efficient when
they engage in the reform of abuses, whether those abuses be in manners,
institutions, or religion; and here they never shrink from the rough,
rude work of the cause they espouse. They are commonly adored by their
followers, commonly execrated by their opponents; but they receive the
execration as the most convincing proof that they have performed their
duties, as the shrieks of the wounded testify to the certainty of the
shots. Indeed, they take a kind of grim delight in so pointing their
invective that the adversaries of their principles are turned into
enemies of their persons, and scout at all fame which does not spring
from obloquy. As they thus exist in a state of war, the gentler elements
of their being fall into the background; the bitterness of the strife
works into their souls, and gives to their conscientious wrath a certain
Puritan pitilessness of temper and tone. In the thick of the fight,
their battle-cry is, "No quarter to the enemies of God and man!"--and
as, unfortunately, there are few men who, tried by their standards, are
friends of man, population very palpably thins as the lava-tide of their
invective sweeps over it, and to the mental eye men, disappear as man
emerges.

The gulf which yawns between uncompromising moral obligation and
compr