“The bravest men of antiquity never thought of avenging injuries by single combat. Did Cæsar send a challenge to Cato, or Pompey to Cæsar, after the repeated affronts that they both had received? Was the greatest captain of Greece dishonoured when struck with a staff? “The upright man, whose life has been spotless, and who never betrayed any symptoms of cowardice, will ever refuse to soil his hand by homicide, and will not be the less honoured. Ever prompt to serve his country, and to afford protection to the weak; to fulfill the most perilous duties, and to defend at the price of his blood everything that is just, honest, and dear to him; he will display in every act of his life that unshaken fortitude which is ever the attribute of true courage. Secure in the consciousness of his integrity, he will step out with head erect, and neither seek nor shun an enemy: he fears death much less than a foul deed, and dreads a crime more than danger. If vile prejudices assail him for a time, every day of his honourable life is a witness to defend him, when all his actions are judged by each other. “Those captious persons who are so ready to provoke others are in general dishonest men, who, under the apprehension that they will meet with the contempt they deserve, endeavour to shield by an affair of honour the infamy of their entire life. “Such a man will make a single effort, and face the world _once_, that he may remain concealed for the _remainder of his days_. True courage possesses more constancy and less anxiety. It is ever what it should be, and requires neither excitement nor restraint. The upright man never moves without it,--in battle with the enemy, in society, in advocating the cause of the absent and of truth; on his couch, in bearing with fortitude the attacks of pain and of death. The strength of mind that inspires this quality belongs to every age; and, ever placing virtue above worldly wants, it seeks not the combat, but it dreads no danger.” In this moral revolution the strangest event was, to behold those whom it was most likely to affect becoming powerful auxiliaries to the contemplated reforms, reforms in which they were doomed to perish. Still they rushed like men stricken with blindness into a new order of things,--a new state of society; tired of the old one, and, from having been sceptical in their sensuality, became sceptical in ideas and in doctrines, until the ruinous ancient social fabric crumbled over their devoted heads.