business oratory. It was in the height of the era of the great period
of the Dissenters in England, and Methodist, Baptist, and Calvinistic
zealots were piercing to the boundaries of English-speaking people,
wild forerunners of those organized bands of clergy which were
speedily to make our colonies sober-minded, and prepare them for
self-government.

"Charles Mason was the scientific spirit of the party--a cool,
observing, painstaking, plodding man, slow in his processes and
reliable in his conclusions, and the bond of friendship between
himself and Dixon was that of two unequal minds admiring the
superiorities of each other. They had already proceeded together to
the Cape of Good Hope on two occasions to study an eclipse and an
occultation. Mason liked Dixon for his ready spirits, almost
improvident courage, speed with details, and worldly bearing. Though
little is known of their memories now, because they left us no
prolific records and spent much of the period of service among us in
the midst of the wilderness or in the reticence required for
mathematical calculation, yet they were the successors of Washington
in the surveying of the Alleghany ridges. Their survey was reliable;
the line was true. How much superior does it stand to-day to the line
of thirty degrees thirty minutes, which is the next great political
parallel below it, and was partly run only a few years afterwards! Up
to their line for the next hundred years flowed the waters of slavery,
but sent no human drop beyond, which did not evaporate in the free
light of a milder sun. God speed the surveyor, whoever he be, who
plants the stakes of a tranquil commonwealth and leaves them to be
the limit of bad principles, the pioneer line of good ones!

"Charles Mason had spent many years of his life, up to his old age,