original authorities. Plutarch was largely quoted, in an English version, and Velleius Paterculus in the original Latin, — one extract filling five lines. Upon these grounds the writer defends Brutus successively from the charges of sycophancy, time-serving, cruelty, and avarice; and modestly adds: “I doubt not an infinity of similar authorities might be quoted by one of more extensive reading and accurate memory.” The conclusion is the only part that can be called ambitious in tone, but it is written with a wholly gererous fervor, and without conceit: —
“The hearts of the dead are now tranquillized. … But the faith of the young bleeds, and young ambition droops when the shades of the just are summoned back from the Elysium to which their appropriate judges had consigned them, and appear before some revolutionary tribunal of modern date. Let us not be too hasty in questioning what is established, and tearing to pieces the archives of the past. There are other sorts of skepticism, and not less desolating in their tendencies, than that of religion. That keen observer, Dr. Spurzheim, warned the people of this country that their great danger lay in want of reverence. Those most distinguished among us for talent and culture should rather check than encourage this delay.”[1]
For one who was to help in organizing, six years later, the most formidable party of literary iconoclasts yet brought together in America, this was beginning pretty well. The protest closes
- ↑ Boston Daily Advertiser, November 27, 1834.
