Next in order and dignity to this soul-binding tie of a noble and virtuous love, which promotes and preserves the intimate union of all the parts of social life, another species or form of a lofty, a good, and a beautiful--nay, even of a sublime--endeavor, shows itself in what we call enthusiasm. The latter has for its positive object a thought which the soul having once intellectually embraced, is ever after filled and possessed with. But the mere inward idea does not suffice here, however it may in the case of the simple conception or admiration of a noble thought. The distinctive characteristic of enthusiasm is rather the untiring energy with which, even at great personal sacrifice, it labors to realize, or to preserve in realization, the idea which has once fully possessed the soul. The commonest form or species of this enthusiasm is patriotism, or the love of country, which best and most plainly manifests itself in seasons of national danger or calamity. As the daily life of the individual alternates between labor and rest, and the refreshing sleep of the night renews the strength which has been exhausted by the toils of the day, so is it on a larger scale with the public life of the state in its alternations between peace and war. For although peace is justly prized and desired, as the greatest of public blessings, still it is some comfort and compensation for its unavoidable absence, to know that the presence of war, and the struggle with its dangers and hardships, first awaken and call into being many of man’s best energies and noblest virtues, which, in uninterrupted peace and tranquillity, must have remained forever dormant. But, as is every where the case throughout the moral domain, a spurious enthusiasm stands close alongside of the true and genuine species, and requires to be carefully distinguished from it. Forced to speak of the love of country, and to paint its genuine traits, I rejoice that I am standing on one of its chosen and most familiar scenes, where my hearers will understand me at the first sound, when I declare that the true enthusiasm of patriotism reveals itself most plainly in misfortune--in the midst of deep and lasting calamities. Another characteristic is, that it does not arbitrarily set up its object, or capriciously make its own occasion, but at the first call of its hereditary sovereign rushes to the post of danger. The second mark, therefore, of a true patriotism is obedience, but an obedience associated with the forward energies of a fixed and prepared resolve, which far outruns the exact requisitions of duty, and gives rise to a true and real equality--the equality of self-sacrifice, wherein the high and noble vie with the poor and lowly in the magnanimous oblation to their country of their best and dearest possessions.