he announced the last conclusions of his political
creed, and the intolerable insolence with which, not
heeding the admonitions of his more cautious confederates,
he thundered out his anathemas of hatred and vengeance
on what he was pleased to call ‘Northern tyranny.’
It was only when the crisis came, that others unfolded
together their base character and their hypocrisy.
Davis, who had been fondled by New-Englanders but a
year or two since, and Hunter, who had cried for peace
and compromise, standing forth at last in the true
light of traitors, and thereby proclaiming their past
life a game of hypocrisy. Toombs, therefore, who
was an original fire-eater, and hence could not be
called a hypocrite, has become less an object of hatred
to us of the loyal States, than those who, while they
sat at the cabinet councils, or were admitted to the
confidence of the Executive, or were sent to foreign
courts, or presided over the Upper House, were using
the power of such high trusts for the consummation
of a conspiracy against their country, yet retaining
the cant of patriotism and feigning a devotion to the
Union. We have dwelt almost exclusively, in the
present chapter, upon Senators whose highest honors
have been tarnished or obliterated by the gravest
of crimes, that of treason toward a vast community.
But it has been with the idea that the least should
be presented first, and that the greater should close
the scene; as in royal processions, the monarch always
brings up the rear. We conceive that the great
talents which we have acknowledged, and which doubtless
all will agree with us in acknowledging, the leaders
of the Southern rebellion to possess, only enhance
the magnitude of their offense, and serve to illustrate
with greater force the enormity of their purposes.
That a brainless fanatic like Lord George Gordon,
or the Neapolitan fisherman, Massaniello, should stir
up tremendous agitation, may be matter for critical
study, but is hardly a subject of wonder. But
that men gifted with exalted ability, undoubted caution,
well-balanced intellect, and apparently refined reason,
all of which have been appreciated and acknowledged,
should propound an erroneous doctrine of a chaotic
system, and proceed to the violence of civil war,
on what they must know to be a false and heretical
plea, can only remind us of those devils who have been
pictured by the matchless art of Milton, of Dante,
and of Goethe, as possessing stately intellects with
perfectly vicious hearts. We propose, in a future
number, if these remarks on public characters are
acceptable, to continue our remarks, by introducing
the loyal Senators of the last Congress, a band of
men who will be found to equal in talent, and immeasurably
to surpass in moral rectitude and earnest patriotism,
the bad company from whom we now part.
MACCARONI AND CANVAS.
V.
THE GRECO.