d make glittering abstractions from it,--as long
as place was to be won or hoped for,--there was no danger. So with
us,--though Jacob and Esau quarrelled already in the womb, yet, so
long as the weaker and more politic brother can get the elder
brother's portion, and simple Esau hunts his whales and pierces his
untrodden forests, content with his mess of pottage,--honestly abiding
by his bargain, though a little puzzled at its terms,--we think that
fratricide, or the sincere thought of it, is very far off.

* * * * *

We should be glad to extract some passages of peculiar force and
beauty,--such as that where Mr. Choate rebukes the undue haste of
reformers, and calls to mind the slow development and longevity of
states and ideas. But our duty is the less pleasing one of pointing to
some of the sophistries of the argument and some of the ill-advised
ebullitions of the orator. We leave his exegesis of "Render unto
Caesar" to answer itself; but what can be worse than this,--worse in
taste, in temper, in reason?

"There is a cant of shallowness and fanaticism which misunderstands
and denies this. There is a distempered and ambitious morality which
says civil prudence is no virtue. There is a philanthropy,--so it
calls itself,--pedantry, arrogance, folly, cruelty, impiousness, I
call it, fit enough for a pulpit, totally unfit for a people,--fit
enough for a preacher, totally unfit for a statesman."

Think of it!--fit enough for St. Augustine and St. Francis, (to
mention no greater names,) fit enough for Taylor and Barrow, for
Bossuet and Fenelon, but not for Mr. Buchanan or Mr. Cushing!

In another place Mr. Choate says, "that even the laughter of fools,
and children, and madmen, little ministers, little editors, and little
politicians, can inflict the mosquito-bite, not deep, but stinging."
As this is one of the best of his sarcasms, we give it the advantage
of the circulation of the "Atlantic,"--generous and tidal circulation,
as he himself might call it. We do not think the mosquito image
new,--if we remember, the editor of the Bungtown Copperhead uses it
weekly against "our pitiful contemporary,"--though the notion of a
mosquito-bite inflicted by a laugh is original with Mr. Choate, unless
Lord Castlereagh may have used it before. But we would seriously ask
Mr. Choate who the big ministers of the country are, if the Beechers,
if Wayland, Park, Bushnell, Cheever, Furness