cted; and all this to alleviate, to cure, and even to
prevent, every calamity which the indigent can suffer, or the affluent
conceive; to remove not only want but ignorance; to suppress not only
misery but vice--would you not exclaim with Hamlet, "What a piece of
work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculties! In action
how like an angel! In compassion how like a god!"

If you looked into the whole comet-like eccentric orb of the human
character; if you compared all the struggling contrariety of principle
and of passion; the clashing of opinion and of action, of resolution and
of performance; the victories of evil over the propensities to good; if
you contrasted the splendid virtue with the disorderly vice; the exalted
generosity with the selfish narrowness; the provident bounty with the
thoughtless prodigality; the extremes of all that is dignified, with the
excesses of all that is abject, would you not exclaim, in the very
spirit of Pascal, O! the grandeur and the littleness, the excellence
and the corruption, the majesty and the meanness of man!

If you attended the debates in our great deliberative assemblies; if you
heard the argument and the eloquence, "the wisdom and the wit," the
public spirit and the disinterestedness; Curtius's devotedness to his
country, and Regulus's disdain of self, expressed with all the logic
which reason can suggest, and embellished with all the rhetoric which
fancy can supply, would you not rapturously cry out, this is

Above all Greek, above all Roman fame?

But if you discerned the bitter personality, the incurable prejudice,
the cutting retort, the suspicious implication, the recriminating sneer,
the cherished animosity; if you beheld the interests of an empire
standing still, the business of the civilized globe suspended, while two
intellectual gladiators are thrusting each to give the other a fall, and
to show his own strength; would you not lament the littleness of the
great, the infirmities of the good, and the weaknesses of the wise?
Would you not, soaring a flight far above Hamlet or Pascal, apostrophize
with the royal Psalmist, "Lord, what is man that thou art mindful of
him, or the son of man that thou regardest him?"

But to descend to my individual concerns. Among my acquaintance, I
visited two separate families, where the daughters were remarkably
attractive; and more than usually endowed with beauty, sense, and
elegance; but I was deterred from follow