The Greeks and Romans were patriots more from passion and impulse,
than from regular and systematic training. Hence the impassioned and
impulsive outbursts that are so frequent in their history. The Roman
seemed ever ready to lay his life upon the altar of his country; and
the soul of the Greek was unconquerable even by superior prowess of
some brother Greek, and, as far as the self-sacrificing spirit of the
patriot is viewed, their superiors are not found upon record. But there
is another element that enters into the formation of the American
character. With the noble traits that raised the Greeks and the Romans
above every other nation of their day, there are to be associated in
the American the more refined qualities of character which render
him pre-eminent as a social and religious being. And without these
qualities the American character is incomplete; they are essential to
its exhibition in the perfection of its beauty.
I do not say that the youth of Greece and Rome were entirely destitute
of those social qualities which I recognise as being the peculiar
adornment of the American character. These qualities were certainly
possessed in a degree by the men of those nations. But what I say is,
that they were lost sight of in the requirements for the forum and
the field, and obscured in the brilliance of the statesman’s honors
and glare of military glory. Thus it is clear that it was the patriot
which those ages were most likely to exhibit, while other and equally
essential parts of character were overlooked and obscured. The domestic
altar was wanting, in its softening and subduing influence, to mould
the man for the domestic circle, and for the refined intercourse it
demands.