freely bring home to his mind, and with what sweetness of temper he
can, and inquire how fast he can fix his sense of duty, braving such
penalties, whenever it may please the next newspaper and a sufficient
number of his neighbors to pronounce his opinions incendiary.

19. It may calm the apprehension of calamity in the most susceptible
heart to see how quick a bound nature has set to the utmost infliction
of malice. We rapidly approach a brink over which no enemy can follow
us.

"Let them rave:[366]
Thou art quiet in thy grave."

In the gloom of our ignorance of what shall be, in the hour when we
are deaf to the higher voices, who does not envy them who have seen
safely to an end their manful endeavor? Who that sees the meanness of
our politics, but inly congratulates Washington that he is long
already wrapped in his shroud, and forever safe; that he was laid
sweet in his grave, the hope of humanity not yet subjugated in him?
Who does not sometimes envy the good and brave, who are no more to
suffer from the tumults of the natural world, and await with curious
complacency the speedy term of his own conversation with finite
nature? And yet the love that will be annihilated sooner than
treacherous has already made death impossible, and affirms itself no
mortal, but a native of the deeps of absolute and inextinguishable
being.