Though it would not be difficult to prove, that the mind of the country is much enervated since the days of her strength, and brought down from its moral dignity, it is not yet so forlorn of all good,—­there is nothing in the face of the times so dark and saddening and repulsive—­as to shock the first feelings of a generous spirit, and drive it at once to seek refuge in the elder ages of our greatness.  There yet survives so much of the character bred up through long years of liberty, danger, and glory, that even what this age produces bears traces of those that are past, and it still yields enough of beautiful, and splendid, and bold, to captivate an ardent but untutored imagination.  And in this real excellence is the beginning of danger:  for it is the first spring of that excessive admiration of the age which at last brings down to its own level a mind born above it.  If there existed only the general disposition of all who are formed with a high capacity for good, to be rather credulous of excellence than suspiciously and severely just, the error would not be carried far:  but there are, to a young mind, in this country and at this time, numerous powerful causes concurring to inflame this disposition, till the excess of the affection above the worth of its object is beyond all computation.  To trace these causes it will be necessary to follow the history of a pure and noble mind from the first moment of that critical passage from seclusion to the world, which changes all the circumstances of its intellectual existence, shows it for the first time the real scene of living men, and calls up the new feeling of numerous relations by which it is to be connected with them.

To the young adventurer in life, who enters upon his course with such a mind, every thing seems made for delusion.  He comes with a spirit the dearest feelings and highest thoughts of which have sprung up under the influences of nature.  He transfers to the realities of life the high wild fancies of visionary boyhood:  he brings with him into the world the passions of solitary and untamed imagination, and hopes which he has learned from dreams.  Those dreams have been of the great and wonderful and lovely, of all which in these has yet been disclosed to him:  his thoughts have dwelt among the wonders of nature, and among the loftiest spirits of men, heroes, and sages, and saints;—­those whose deeds, and thoughts, and hopes, were high above ordinary mortality, have been the familiar companions of his soul.  To love and to admire has been the joy of his existence.  Love and admiration are the pleasures he will demand of the world.  For these he has searched eagerly into the ages that are gone; but with more ardent and peremptory expectation he requires them of that in which his own lot is cast:  for to look on life with hopes of happiness is a necessity of his nature, and to him there is no happiness but such as is surrounded with excellence.