On these points, it will be seen in the subsequent pages, the subject of the present biography, as a boldly-pronounced American citizen, was in most respects a good example. If occasionally, in some things, he practised the American vice,--self-will, unconscious bigotry intrenched in a shedding conceit,--he prevailingly exemplified the American virtue,--tolerance, frankness, generosity, a sympathetic forbearance in the presence of what was venerable and dear to others, although it was not so to him. While withholding his homage from merely conventional sanctities, he never scoffed at them; and he always instinctively worshipped those intrinsic sanctities which carry their divine credentials in their own nature. The filial and fraternal spirit in particular was very strong in him, and bore rich fruits in his life and conduct. The conspicuous relative decay of the filial and fraternal virtues, or weakening of the family tie, among the American people, the precocious development and self-assertion of their children, wear an evil aspect, and certainly are not charming. Yet they may be inevitable phases in the evolution of the final state of society. They may distinguish a transitional stage through which all countries will have to pass, America being merely in the front. In ancient life the political and social unit was the family. The whole family was held strictly responsible for the deeds of each member of it. The drift marked by democracy is to make the individual the ultimate unit in place of the family, legally clearing each person from his consanguineous entanglements, and holding him responsible solely for his own deeds in relation to entire society. The movement towards individuality is disintegrating; but, when completed, it may, by a terminal conversion of opposites, play into a more intimate fellowship and harmony of the whole than has ever yet been realized on earth. Thus it is not impossible that the narrower and intenser domestic bonds may be giving way simply before the extruding growth of wider and grander bonds, the particular yielding merely as the universal advances. If the destiny of the future be some form of social unity, some public solidarity of sympathies and interests in which all shall mutually identify themselves with one another, then the temporary irreverences and insurgences of a democratic régime may have their providential purpose and their abundant compensation in that final harmony of co-operative freedom and obedience to which they are preparing the way out of priestly and monarchical régimes.