the virtues of the best men, the noblest philosophers, and the most
disinterested patriots of antiquity, nothing? It is impossible for two
things to be more unlike than the general profligacy of the reigns of
Charles the Second and Louis the Fifteenth on the one hand, and the
austere virtues and the extinction of all private considerations in the
general happiness and honour, which constitute the spirit of the best
pages of ancient history, and which exalt and transfix the spirit of
every ingenuous and high-souled reader, on the other.

Let us then pay to human virtue the honour that is so justly its due!
Imagination is indeed a marvellous power; but imagination never equalled
history, the achievements which man has actually performed. It is in
vain that the man of contemplation sits down in his closet; it is in
vain that the poet yields the reins to enthusiasm and fancy: there is
something in the realities of life, that excites the mind infinitely
more, than is in the power of the most exalted reverie. The true hero
cannot, like the poet, or the delineator of fictitious adventures, put
off what he has to do till to-morrow. The occasion calls, and he must
obey. He sees the obstacles, and the adversary he has to encounter,
before him. He sees the individuals, for whose dear sake he resolves to
expose himself to every hazard and every evil. The very circumstance,
that he is called on to act in the face of the public, animates him.
It is thus that resolution is produced, that martyrdom is voluntarily
encountered, and that the deeds of genuine, pure and undeniable heroism
are performed.

Let then no man, in the supercilious spirit of a fancied disdain, allow
himself to detract from our common nature. We are ourselves the models
of all the excellence that the human mind can conceive. There have been
men, whose virtues may well redeem all the contempt with which satire
and detraction have sought to overwhelm our species. There have been
memorable periods in the history of man, when the best, the most
generous and exalted sentiments have swallowed up and obliterated all
that was of an opposite character. And it is but just, that those by
whom these things are fairly considered, should anticipate the progress
of our nature, and believe that human understanding and human virtue
will hereafter accomplish such things as the heart of man has never yet
been daring enough to conceive.

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