15.  There is no weakness or exposure for which we cannot find consolation in the thought,—­this is a part of my constitution, part of my relation and office to my fellow-creature.  Has nature covenanted with me that I should never appear to disadvantage, never make a ridiculous figure?  Let us be generous of our dignity as well as of our money.  Greatness once and forever has done with opinion.  We tell our charities, not because we wish to be praised for them, not because we think they have great merit, but for our justification.  It is a capital blunder; as you discover, when another man recites his charities.

16.  To speak the truth, even with some austerity, to live with some rigor of temperance, or some extremes of generosity, seems to be an asceticism which common good-nature would appoint to those who are at ease and in plenty, in sign that they feel a brotherhood with the great multitude of suffering men.  And not only need we breathe and exercise the soul by assuming the penalties of abstinence, of debt, of solitude, of unpopularity, but it behooves the wise man to look with a bold eye into those rarer dangers which sometimes invade men, and to familiarize himself with disgusting forms of disease, with sounds of execration, and the vision of violent death.

17.  Times of heroism are generally times of terror, but the day never shines in which this element may not work.  The circumstances of man, we say, are historically somewhat better in this country, and at this hour, than perhaps ever before.  More freedom exists for culture.  It will not now run against an ax at the first step out of the beaten track of opinion.  But whoso is heroic will always find crises to try his edge.  Human virtue demands her champions and martyrs, and the trial of persecution always proceeds.  It is but the other day that the brave Lovejoy[365] gave his breast to the bullets of a mob, for the rights of free speech and opinion, and died when it was better not to live.

18.  I see not any road to perfect peace which a man can walk, but to take counsel of his own bosom.  Let him quit too much association, let him go home much, and establish himself in those courses he approves.  The unremitting retention of simple and high sentiments in obscure duties is hardening the character to that temper which will work with honor, if need be, in the tumult, or on the scaffold.  Whatever outrages have happened to men may befall a man again; and very easily in a republic, if there appear any signs of a decay of religion.  Coarse slander, fire, tar and feathers, and the gibbet, the youth may freely bring home to his mind, and with what sweetness of temper he can, and inquire how fast he can fix his sense of duty, braving such penalties, whenever it may please the next newspaper and a sufficient number of his neighbors to pronounce his opinions incendiary.

19.  It may calm the apprehension of calamity in the most susceptible heart to see how quick a bound nature has set to the utmost infliction of malice.  We rapidly approach a brink over which no enemy can follow us.