The Damon of Forrest was in every respect grandly conceived and grandly embodied. His noble form carried proudly aloft in weighty ease, clad in Grecian garb, with long robe and sandals, corresponded with the justice and dignity of his soul. He was in no sense a sentimentalist or fanatic, but a man with intellect and heart balanced in conscience,--equally a patriot, a philosopher, and a friend,--his sentiments set in the great virtues of human nature loyal to the gods, his convictions and love not mere instincts but embedded in his reason and his honor. Yet, trained as he had been in the lofty ethics of Pythagoras, the austere discipline deadened not, but only curbed, the tremendous elemental passions of his being. Beneath his cultivated stateliness and playfulness the impetuous volume and energy of his natural feelings made them, reposing, grand as mountains clad with verdure, aroused, terrible as volcanoes spouting fire. An inferior actor would be tempted to weaken or slur everything else in order to give the higher relief to the great central topic of friendship. It was the rare excellence of Forrest that he gave as patient an attention and as sustained a treatment to the gravity and zealous devotion of the senator, the thoughtful habit of the scholar, the fondness of the husband and father, as he did to the touching affection of the friend, in his portraiture of Damon. He makes his appearance in the street, on his way to the Senate, when he encounters a crowd of venal officers and soldiers thronging to the citadel, brandishing their swords and cheering for the despot. He says, with a musing air first, then quickly passing through indignant scorn to mournful expostulation,-- "Then Dionysius has o'erswayed it? Well, It is what I expected: there is now No public virtue left in Syracuse. What should be hoped from a degenerate, Corrupted, and voluptuous populace, When highly-born and meanly-minded nobles Would barter freedom for a great man's feast, And sell their country for a smile? The stream With a more sure eternal tendency Seeks not the ocean, than a sensual race Their own devouring slavery. I am sick At my inmost heart of everything I see And hear! O Syracuse, I am at last Forced to despair of thee! And yet thou art My land of birth,--thou art my country still; And, like an unkind mother, thou hast left The claims of holiest nature in my heart, And I must sorrow for, not hate thee!" The soldiery shout,-- "For Dionysius! Ho, for Dionysius! _Damon._ Silence, obstreperous traitors! Your throats offend the quiet of the city; And thou, who standest foremost of these knaves, Stand back and answer me, a Senator, What have you done?" And then he slowly leans towards them with dilating front, and sways the whole crowd away from him as if by the invisible momentum of some surcharging magnetism.