gracious-minded Julius Caesar into usurpation and tyranny, has also
been found by Christian heroes the most perilous ordeal of their
virtue; but, inasmuch as they are Christian heroes, and not pagan
men, worshippers of false gods, whose fabled examples inculcated all
these deeds of self-absorbing vain-glory, our heroes of a "better
revelation" have no excuse for failing under their trial, and many
there be who pass through it "pure and undefiled." Such were the
great Alfred of England, Gustavus Vasa of Sweden, and his greater
successor in true glory, Gustavus Adolphus,--all champions of
immutable justice and ministers of peace. And though these may be
regarded as personages beyond the sphere of ordinary emulations, yet
the same principles, or their opposites, prevail in every order of
men from the prince to the peasant; and, perhaps, at no period of the
world more than the present were these divers principles in greater
necessity to be considered, and, according to the just conclusion, be
obeyed. On all sides of us we see public and private society broken
up, as it were by an earthquake: the noblest and the meanest passions
of the human bosom at contention, and the latter often so disguised,
that the vile ambuscade is not even suspected till found within the
heart of the fortress itself. We have, however, one veritable
touchstone, that of the truest observation, "ye shall know a tree by
its fruits." Let us look round, then, for those which bear "good
fruits," wholesome to the taste as well as pleasant to the sight,
whether they grow on high altitudes or in the humbler valleys of the
earth; let us view men of all degrees in life in their actions, and
not in their pretensions,--such men as were some of the Sobieski race
in Poland, in every change of their remarkable lives. When placed at
the summit of mortal fame, surrounded by greatness and glory, and
consequent power, they evinced neither pride to others nor a sense of
self-aggrandizement in themselves; and, when under a reverse