torial or a presidential chair. But
such belong not to the family of the lion or the brood of the eagle.
What? Think you these places would satisfy an Alexander, a Caesar, or a
Napoleon? Never! Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks
regions hitherto unexplored. It sees no distinction in adding story to
story upon the monuments of fame erected to the memory of others. It
denies that it is glory enough to serve under any chief. It scorns to
tread in the footsteps of any predecessor, however illustrious. It
thirsts and burns for distinction; and, if possible, it will have it,
whether at the expense of emancipating slaves, or enslaving free men. Is
it unreasonable, then, to expect that some men, possessed of the
loftiest genius, coupled with ambition sufficient to push it to its
utmost stretch, will at some time spring up among us? And when such a
one does, it will require the people to be united with each other,
attached to the government and laws, and generally intelligent, to
successfully frustrate his design.

Distinction will be his paramount object, and although he would as
willingly, perhaps more so, acquire it by doing good as harm, yet that
opportunity being passed, and nothing left to be done in the way of
building up, he would sit down boldly to the task of pulling down. Here,
then, is a probable case, highly dangerous, and such a one as could not
well have existed heretofore.

* * * * *

All honour to our Revolutionary ancestors, to whom we are indebted for
these institutions. They will not be forgotten. In history we hope they
will be read of, and recounted, so long as the Bible shall be read. But
even granting that they will, their influence cannot be what it
heretofore has been. Even then, they cannot be so universally known, nor
so vividly felt, as they were by the generation just gone to rest. At
the close of that struggle, nearly every adult male had been a
participator in some of its scenes. The consequence was, that of those
scenes, in the form of a husband, a father, a son, or a brother, a
living history was to be found in every family,--a history bearing the
indubitable testimonies to its own authenticity in the limbs mangled, in
the scars of wounds received in the midst of the very scenes related; a
history, too, that could be read and understood alike by all, the wise
and the ignorant, the learned and the unlearned. But those histories are
gone. They can be