Page:Republican Court by Rufus Griswold.djvu/336

assuming the title of Christian teachers, and half educated and feeble minded writers of literature, sensible of their incapacity to acquire distinction in the competitions of excellence, are offering among us, as novelties, those sometime obsolete mockeries that kindled into a flame of passion the volatile and depraved nation which surpassed all others, first in disobedience and next in contempt of the divine law. Forgetful of the terribly literal fulfilment which France presented of the prophecy that "the nations which forget God shall be turned into hell," there are still found miserable creatures willing enough to brave all penalties for the base satisfaction of a transient notoriety. In the days of Washington this class was comparatively much more numerous, and more dignified in talents and position.

The French monarchy had been abolished; whatever there was of private worth and public respectability in Paris had followed the king to the guillotine; and it had been decreed by the convention that there is no God. The interest excited in America by the commencement of the revolution became enthusiasm when our ancient ally assumed the name and form of a republic. A people less honorable and sagacious might well have been carried away by their grateful affections and political sympathies, and in the tumult of conflicting opinion and storm of aggressive action, only the unerring judgment and indomitable will of Washington, his defiance of foreign and domestic enemies, his immovable disregard of public clamor and private treachery, a sense and temper and justice which seemed above the capacity of human nature, preserved our country from anarchy and from becoming the fear instead of the hope of the world. Less easily appreciable by the common mind than his military conduct, the course which he pursued during this agitation displays his loftiest heroism and constitutes his best claim to the reverence of posterity.