It will be seen that I abandon most of the trite declamation against ambition. I touch not on its long inquietudes, its inevitable torments, exacerbated a hundred fold, if their victim preserve degrees of mental elevation and remains of moral sentiment. Life passes pleasantly among men who have just views, upright hearts and frank manners, the true elements of greatness and enjoyment. Surrounded by such minds, we respire, as it were, a free and an empyrean atmosphere. Yield yourself to the empire of ambition; and in all countries, and in all time, you condemn yourself to live surrounded by greedy, unquiet, false and vindictive intriguers, gnashing their teeth at all success in which they had no agency. All that encircle you unite insolence and baseness. Those who envy authority and office are worthy of commiseration. Men in power are happy, they think. They have but to wish, and it is accomplished. The epitaph of the Swedish minister is sublime, and the index of a great truth. He had run the career of power and fortune with success. When near the period of his death, he ordered this inscription for his tomb: _Tandem Felix._ _At last I am happy._ We never leave the society of the great as we entered it. We have become either better or more perverse. Inexperience is easily dazzled with the superficial splendor. For a man of disciplined mind and a character of energy, it is the most useful of schools. Here he tests and confirms his principles. Here he observes, sometimes with terror, sometimes with disgust, the melancholy results of the seductive passions. He here sees those who seem to have reached all their aims enjoying the repose of happy privacy. I anticipate the objection, ‘that this is all absurdity; that not one will be so convinced of his misery as to resign his power and descend from his elevation to that obscurity for which he sighs.’ I believe it; and I see in this a deeper shade in his misery. He has so long experienced the pernicious excitement of this splendid torment, that he can no longer exist in repose. Such is the lot of erring humanity, that the world naturally associates glory and happiness with ambition, and sees not that the association is formed by our own mental feebleness. To rise above vulgar errors and the common train of thinking, to form sage principles, and, still more, to have the courage and decision to follow them, this is the proof of real force of character. But, to feel the need of dazzling the vulgar, to be willing to creep in order to rise, to struggle and dispute for trinkets, this is the common standard by which the multitude estimate a great mind.