From these impulses, then, our brethren of the Peninsula had risen; they could have risen from no other.  By these energies, and by such others as (under judicious encouragement) would naturally grow out of and unite with these, the multitudes, who have risen, stand; and, if they desert them, must fall.—­Riddance, mere riddance—­safety, mere safety—­are objects far too defined, too inert and passive in their own nature, to have ability either to rouze or to sustain.  They win not the mind by any attraction of grandeur or sublime delight, either in effort or in endurance:  for the mind gains consciousness of its strength to undergo only by exercise among materials which admit the impression of its power,—­which grow under it, which bend under it,—­which resist,—­which change under its influence,—­which alter either through its might or in its presence, by it or before it.  These, during times of tranquillity, are the objects with which, in the studious walks of sequestered life, Genius most loves to hold intercourse; by which it is reared and supported;—­these are the qualities in action and in object, in image, in thought, and in feeling, from communion with which proceeds originally all that is creative in art and science, and all that is magnanimous in virtue.—­Despair thinks of safety, and hath no purpose; fear thinks of safety; despondency looks the same way:—­but these passions are far too selfish, and therefore too blind, to reach the thing at which they aim; even when there is in them sufficient dignity to have an aim.—­All courage is a projection from ourselves; however short-lived, it is a motion of hope.  But these thoughts bind too closely to something inward,—­to the present and to the past,—­that is, to the self which is or has been.  Whereas the vigour of the human soul is from without and from futurity,—­in breaking down limit, and losing and forgetting herself in the sensation and image of Country and of the human race; and, when she returns and is most restricted and confined, her dignity consists in the contemplation of a better and more exalted being, which, though proceeding from herself, she loves and is devoted to as to another.

In following the stream of these thoughts, I have not wandered from my course:  I have drawn out to open day the truth from its recesses in the minds of my countrymen.—­Something more perhaps may have been done:  a shape hath perhaps been given to that which was before a stirring spirit.  I have shewn in what manner it was their wish that the struggle with the adversary of all that is good should be maintained—­by pure passions and high actions.  They forbid that their noble aim should be frustrated by measuring against each other things which are incommensurate—­mechanic against moral power—­body against soul.  They will not suffer, without expressing their sorrow, that purblind calculation should wither the purest hopes in the face of all-seeing justice.  These are times of strong appeal—­of deep-searching visitation; when the best abstractions of the prudential understanding give way, and are included and absorbed in a supreme comprehensiveness of intellect and passion; which is the perfection and the very being of humanity.