Page:The Campaner thal, and other writings.djvu/355

 and the tree of freedom,—shed, but never reckoned! It is only great periods of calamity that reveal to us our great men, as comets are revealed by total eclipses of the sun. Not merely upon the field of battle, but also upon the consecrated soil of virtue—and upon the classic ground of truth, thousands of nameless heroes must fall and struggle to build up the footstool from which history surveys the one hero, whose name is embalmed, bleeding—conquering—and resplendent. The grandest of heroic deeds are those which are performed within four walls and in domestic privacy. And, because history records only the self-sacrifices of the male sex, and because she dips her pen only in blood,—therefore is it that in the eyes of the unseen spirit of the world our annals appear doubtless far more beautiful and noble than in our own.

THE GRANDEUR OF MAN IN HIS LITTLENESS.

AN upon this earth would be vanity and hollo wness, dust and ashes, vapor and a bubble,—were it not that he felt himself to be so. That it is possible for him to harbor such a feeling,—this, by implying a comparison of himself with something higher in himself, this is it which makes him the immortal creature that he is.

NIGHT.

HE earth is every day overspread with the veil of night for the same reason as the cages of birds are darkened,—namely, that we may the more readily apprehend the higher harmonies of thought in the hush and