The dispositions of man depend greatly upon the associations of his early
life. The youthful and pliant organization is easily impressed by the
natural scenes of birthplace and childhood, and the effect of the views of
the savage mountain gorges, the dark and gloomy forests, or the distant
landscape, smiling in the rays of the sun, and decorated with the most
beautiful works of human industry, are felt hereafter in the labors and
conceptions of manhood. Men sometimes are but the living reflections of
the savage scenes among which they have been reared, and seldom do we see
them arise from that immense and world-wide mass of fallen humanity to
cherish anew, to maintain the noble principles of this earthly life, and
lead the willing world to the true worship of the Creator.
Wirz was born among the glorious mountains of Switzerland, where the lofty
and dazzling peaks of eternal snow, pointing upwards into the clear vault
of heaven, impress the human mind with sublimity, or where the deeper
glens sadden the heart and blast the aspiring imagination.
It seems that the natural impressions made upon this man in this beautiful
country were of an earthly and sordid character, for he has always
exhibited, in his wanderings in pursuit of fortune, the reckless and
degraded soul of a mercenary.
Seeking gain in the New World, he turned up in the Slave States when the
revolt was determined upon, and without reluctance, offered his services
to the frantic and savage horde. Although a Swiss and republican by birth
and inheritance, he does not hesitate between liberty and despotism. The
principles of political dogmas do not agitate him; it is the desire for
money, and an insatiate thirst for blood, blasting the natural heart with
cruel and remorseless passions, that led him blindly and swiftly to ruin.
The fatal plunge taken, and there was no return. The compunctions of
humanity passed over his seared and unfeeling conscience, with no more
effect than when the waves surge over the huge rocks which form the bed of
the deepest ocean.
He was selected for the fatal position by the brutal Winder, who first
observed him among the unfortunate prisoners of the first disastrous
battle of the republic. What should recommend him, then, to the notice of
this inhuman officer, can be easily conjectured by the survivors of the
prisons of that period. Cruelty then was pastime, it afterwards became a
law. It was then that some of the chivalry, after the manner of the tribes
of Abyssinia and Eastern Africa, made glorious trophies of the skulls and
the bones of their antagonists who had fallen in battle.
This man appeared at times kind and humane, and his voice had the accents
of benevolence; but when excited, natural sentiments recoiled with horror
at the depth and extent of his imprecations. This assumed gentleness of
disposition is of but little weight among the examples of history.
"I have often said," writes Montaigne, "that cowardice is the mother of
cruelty, and by experience have observed that the spite and asperity of
malicious and inhuman courage are accompanied with the mantle of feminine
softness." The ensanguined Sylla wept over the recital of the miseries he
himself had caused.
That daily murderer, the tyrant of Pheres, forbade the play of tragedy,
lest the citizens should weep over the misfortunes of Hecuba and
Andromache.
The beautiful eyes of the Roman maidens glistened with tears at the
imaginary sufferings of the inanimate marbles of Niobe and Laocoon, yet
how remorselessly they gave the signal of death to the defeated gladiator
on the arena of the Colosseum!
The warm, generous, natural impulses of the heart soon become affected,
impaired, and even reversed by brutal associations.
Circumstances develop greatly the characters of men, and they sometimes
rise to true greatness, or sink into baseness, according to the law of
effect, of contact, and example.