e
Emancipation, which John Quincy Adams held justifiable as a war
measure, and Lincoln proclaimed.

But though the greatness of rulers and social founders is in what they
establish and bring to pass, yet in default of this rare achievement,
which happens seldom in the course of ages to any man, a certain
impracticability is in others in many exigencies a blessing to be
thankful for, a virtue to applaud. In the collisions of interest with
principle are plenty to trim, compromise, and compound as oligarchs or
demagogues bid; but as the merit of some substances is the lack of
ductility, so how oft we must lean on unmalleable men, whose back-bone
is not supple as a universal joint, who will not "crook the pregnant
hinges of the knee where thrift may follow fawning," and who, in a
noble discontent with all yet undertaken or done, summon to worthier
performance towards never-attained perfection in betterment of the
common lot. Mr. Rubinstein was displeased with the preacher who said,
"Men must be expected to do no more than they can." "No," said the
artist, "that doctrine letting down the standard is worse than actual
vice. We can forgive the last, not the first!" Men must do the
_impossible_,--a word which Napoleon told his officer was beastly,
never to be spoken, and in his dictionary not found. "With God all
things are possible," and that means possible to whoever works with
Him. Said the pianist to his pupils, "If you do not expect or intend
to write finer music than Beethoven, you have no business to compose
at all." Mr. Sumner aimed at the sun; and the feeling of philanthropic
duty with which he stirred the body politic out of the custom of
chronic oppression and old habit of wrong was of more precious
consequence than carrying any particular scheme. With this
earnestness, that would not stop short of improving the world, I was
struck in my last conversation with him on the threatened Spanish war.
If he did not interest or magnetize everybody, all individuals, like
Crittenden or Clay, few cared more for their kind; and this broad
benevolence, as well as special affection, lays hold on immortality.
Who shall say such as Agassiz and Sumner are dead? "A great man has
fallen," said my friend: no, a good man has risen.

Death brings simplicity and reality. As it approaches, learning and
philosophy go; goodness and conscience are left, the last guests in
the feast of life at the table of the heart. In Sumner the
_sentiment