every vulgar prejudice, to advocate every popular error, to chime in with every dominant party, to fawn, flatter and deceive, and become a demagogue! All manliness of principle has been lost in this long course of meanness: he dare not use his temporary popularity for any purposes of public good, in which there may be a hazard of forfeiting it; and the very eminence to which he is exalted renders but more conspicuous his servility and degradation. However clear the convictions of his judgment, however strong the admonitions of his, as yet, not thoroughly stifled conscience, not these, not the law of God, nor the rule of right, nor the public good, but the caprice of his constituents, must be his only guide. Having risen by artifice, and conscious of no worth to support him, he is in hourly dread of being supplanted in the favor of the deluded multitude by some more cunning deceiver. And such, sooner or later, is sure to be his fate. At some unlucky moment, when he bears his blushing honors thick upon him--and well may such honors blush--he is jerked from his elevation by some more dextrous demagogue, and falls, unpitied, never to rise again. Can this be the lot of him who has been here trained to admire and love high-minded excellence, and who has been taught by high classical authority to regard with the same fearless and immovable indifference the stern countenance of the tyrant and the wicked ardor of the multitude, and who has learned from a yet higher and holier authority to hold fast to "whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, to abhor that which is evil and cleave to that which is good?" Believe me, however, this is no fancy picture. The original may be found in the world every day. Nor will it surprise those who have had occasion to see how the vain heart is swollen, and the giddy head turned, how honesty of purpose and manliness of spirit are perverted by popular applause. It is but the first step that costs. Once yield to the suggestion that a little deceit or prevarication, a slight sacrifice of principle and independence, a compromise of conscience in matters not absolutely fundamental, may be excused, when the immediate gain is obvious and the end in view important, and the downward path becomes every day more and more smooth until, in its descent, it reaches the very abyss of vulgar, trading, intriguing, electioneering, office-hunting politicians. If in this lowest depth a lower deep can be found, none of us, I am sure, have the curiosity to explore it.