ride of art and
skill of masterly arithmetic and power of remote combination, the
consciousness of being an agent and playfellow of the original laws of
the world. He too believes that none can supply him, and that a man must
be born to trade or he cannot learn it.

This virtue draws the mind more when it appears in action to ends not
so mixed. It works with most energy in the smallest companies and in
private relations. In all cases it is an extraordinary and incomputable
agent. The excess of physical strength is paralyzed by it. Higher
natures overpower lower ones by affecting them with a certain sleep. The
faculties are locked up, and offer no resistance. Perhaps that is the
universal law. When the high cannot bring up the low to itself, it
benumbs it, as man charms down the resistance of the lower animals. Men
exert on each other a similar occult power. How often has the influence
of a true master realized all the tales of magic! A river of command
seemed to run down from his eyes into all those who beheld him, a
torrent of strong sad light, like an Ohio or Danube, which pervaded them
with his thoughts and colored all events with the hue of his mind. "What
means did you employ?" was the question asked of the wife of Concini,
in regard to her treatment of Mary of Medici; and the answer was, "Only
that influence which every strong mind has over a weak one." Cannot
Caesar in irons shuffle off the irons and transfer them to the person
of Hippo or Thraso the turnkey? Is an iron handcuff so immutable a bond?
Suppose a slaver on the coast of Guinea should take on board a gang
of negroes which should contain persons of the stamp of Toussaint
L'Ouverture: or, let us fancy, under these swarthy masks he has a gang
of Washingtons in chains. When they arrive at Cuba, will the relative
order of the ship's company be the same? Is there nothing but rope and
iron? Is there no love, no reverence? Is there never a glimpse of right
in a poor slave-captain's mind; and cannot these be supposed available
to break or elude or in any manner overmatch the tension of an inch or
two of iron ring?

This is a natural power, like light and heat, and all nature cooperates
with it. The reason why we feel one man's presence and do not feel
another's is as simple as gravity. Truth is the summit of being; justice
is the application of it to affairs. All individual natures stand in a
scale, according to the purity of this element in them. The will of