expanding like fertile fields, open to every breath of heaven and every beam of day, expanding from year to year by the cheerful labour of man, and every year covered with new productiveness for the use of universal mankind.  I own that there may have been rashness in urging the great experiment—­there may have been a dangerous disregard of the actual circumstances of the people, the time, and the world—­the daring hand of the philosopher may have drawn down the lightning too suddenly to be safe; the patriot may have flashed the blaze of his torch too strongly on eyes so long trained to the twilight of the dungeon.  The leader of this enterprise himself, like the first discoverer of fire, may have brought wrath upon his own head, and be condemned to have his vitals gnawed in loneliness and chains; but nothing shall convince Lafayette that a great work has not been begun for the living race, for all nations, and for all posterity.”

I could not suppress the question—­“But when will the experiment be complete?  When will the tree, planted thus in storms, take hold of the soil?  When will the tremendous tillage which begins by clearing with the conflagration, and ploughing with the earthquake, bring forth the harvest of peace to the people?”

“These must be the legacy to our children,” was the reply, in a grave and almost contrite tone.  “The works of man are rapid only when they are meant for decay.  The American savage builds his wigwam in a week, to last for a year.  The Parthenon took half an age and the treasures of a people, to last for ever.”

We parted for the night—­and for thirty years.  My impression of this remarkable man was, that he had more heart than head; that a single idea had engrossed his faculties, to the exclusion of all others; that he was following a phantom, with the belief that it was a substantial form, and that, like the idolaters of old, who offered their children to their frowning deity, he imagined that the costlier the sacrifice, the surer it was of propitiation.  Few men have been more misunderstood in his own day or in ours.  Lifted to the skies for an hour by popular adulation, he has been sunk into obscurity ever since by historic contempt.  Both were mistaken.  He was the man made for the time—­precisely the middle term between the reign of the nobility and the reign of the populace.  Certainly not the man to “ride on the whirlwind and direct the storm;” but as certainly altogether superior to the indolent luxury of the class among whom he was born.  Glory and liberty, the two highest impulses of our common nature, sent him at two and twenty from the most splendid court of Europe, to the swamps and snows, the desperate service and dubious battles of America.  Eight years of voyages, negotiations, travels, and exposure to the chances of the field, proved his energy, and at the age of thirty he had drawn upon himself the eyes of the world.  Here he ought to have rested, or have died.  But the Revolution swept him off his feet.  It was an untried region—­a conflict of elements unknown to the calculation of man; he was whirled along by a force which whirled the monarchy, the church, and the nation with him, and sank only when France plunged after him.