“Hush!” interrupted the student; “you know not what you say: you weigh not the folly, the madness of your design! I am a man more fallen, more sunken, more disappointed than you. I, too, have had at my heart the burning and lonely hope which, through years of misfortune and want, has comforted me with the thought of serving and enlightening mankind,—I, too, have devoted to the fulfilment of that hope, days and nights, in which the brain grew dizzy and the heart heavy and clogged with the intensity of my pursuits. Were the dungeon and the scaffold my reward Heaven knows that I would not flinch eye or hand or abate a jot of heart and hope in the thankless prosecution of my toils. Know me, then, as one of fortunes more desperate than your own; of an ambition more unquenchable; of a philanthropy no less ardent; and, I will add, of a courage no less firm: and behold the utter hopelessness of your projects with others, when to me they only appear the visions of an enthusiast.”
Wolfe sank down in the chair.
“Is it even so?” said he, slowly and musingly. “Are my hopes but delusions? Has my life been but one idle, though convulsive dream? Is the goddess of our religion banished from this great and populous earth to the seared and barren hearts of a few solitary worshippers, whom all else despise as madmen or persecute as idolaters? And if so, shall we adore her the less?—-No! though we perish in her cause, it is around her altar that our corpses shall be found!”
“My friend,” said Glendower, kindly, for he was touched by the sincerity though opposed to the opinions of the republican, “the night is yet early: we will sit down to discuss our several doctrines calmly and in the spirit of truth and investigation.”
“Away!” cried Wolfe, rising and slouching his hat over his bent and lowering brows; “away! I will not listen to you: I dread your reasonings; I would not have a particle of my faith shaken. If I err, I have erred from my birth,—erred with Brutus and Tell, Hampden and Milton, and all whom the thousand tribes and parties of earth consecrate with their common gratitude and eternal reverence. In that error I will die! If our party can struggle not with hosts, there may yet arise some minister with the ambition of Caesar, if not his genius,—of whom a single dagger can rid the earth!”
“And if not?” said Glendower.
“I have the same dagger for myself!” replied Wolfe, as he closed the door.
CHAPTER XLI.
Bolingbroke has said that “Man is his own sharper and his
own bubble;” and certainly he who is acutest in duping
others is ever the most ingenious in outwitting himself. The
criminal is always a sophist; and finds in his own reason a
special pleader to twist laws human and divine into a
sanction of his crime. The rogue is so much in the habit of
cheating, that he packs the cards even when playing at
Patience with himself.—STEPHEN MONTAGUE.