But it may be asked, “How can Coriolanus be justly charged with the crime of those consequences which his clemency prevented?” In estimating character, the man who has once evinced the inveterate malignity of his heart, must be branded with eternal infamy, unless it appears that he subsequently became penetrated with profound contrition, and changed his conduct from the purest and most virtuous motives. Was this true of Coriolanus? Having contemned the higher claims of his country, and thrown off her allegiance, his ultimately yielding to the yearning voice of natural affection was a weakness—an amiable weakness, it may be said—but still a weakness. Such is our mental conformation, that we behold a congruous character with a degree of complacency, even though the character be a bad one; and although we may lend a measure of our sympathy to those good acts of confessedly bad men, which are the mere gratification of a physical propensity, the unbending rigor of reason sternly refuses to allow any moral excellence to those deeds, or to insult the majesty of virtue by assigning them as her offspring. We return, however, to a point temporarily merged, in order to follow up another branch of the argument. The principle of revenge is wholly, and under all circumstances, inadmissible. Nor is it a proper reply to this proposition to say, that ours is an age of moral and intellectual light, and that it is unjust to apply to one who lived two thousand years ago, the same rigid rule of judgment to which he would be subjected at the present day. In the trial of questions involving an abstract principle, there should manifestly be but one standard for all ages and nations. Any other hypothesis will lead to the most glaring absurdities. For if the moral quality of an action could be modified by the unimportant circumstances of _time_ or _place_, there is no crime in the decalogue which may not be justified. Modern heathen nations almost universally allow polygamy; in certain portions of the world murder is deemed innocent; and the ancient Spartan, we know, regarded theft as the prince of virtues. Where is the man who would presume to excuse these practices because they pertain to a barbarous nation, or to a period of moral darkness? Yet may it as well be done, as to justify the practice of revenge in the case under consideration. The ignorance of the age or nation may _palliate_ the conduct of an individual; it cannot justify what is intrinsically wrong; and it would be in the last degree preposterous to put out the lights by which we are surrounded, and go to seek the radiant form of virtue in the dim twilight of heathenism. If Coriolanus had displayed a fortitude in suffering equal to his bravery in action—if he had never suffered a thought of retaliation upon his ingrate country to invade his breast; but, when thrust out from home and kindred, and all that on earth he held most dear, he had sought, in the conscious