"How is it in the world to come? Will patience have had her perfect
work in this sphere, or is the virtue to be exercised there, until
we shall have acquired an evenness of temper which no possible
provocation can disturb? Are the bores to be all penned in a corner
by themselves, or are they to be let loose to educate the saints to
the sublimest degree of patience of which our nature is capable?
These are deep questions. I do not remember that you have given any
special attention to the use of bores in the moral government of
the world in your book on 'The Problem of Human Destiny.' I admit
their utility as a class: they serve a most excellent purpose; but
whether we are to be annoyed with them in the next world is the
doubt. Some of them are most worthy people, and capital Christians,
and cannot be kept out of Paradise; but will they be allowed to
torment the elect there?"
Probably the title of the Great American could be as fittingly applied
to Bryant as to any man our nation has produced. He has been happily
called the Puritan Greek; and this epithet applies equally well to his
life and to his writings. If he was a Stoic in his earlier years, he was
as unmistakably a Christian in later life. During both periods he was
pure as ice, lofty in thought, noble in deed,--an inspiration toward the
True Life to all who watched his course. No errors of passion or of
overheated blood did he have to mourn over, even in youth; yet he was
not cold or unimpassioned, as his deep devotion throughout life to the
woman of his choice proved. He led emphatically the intellectual life,
with as little admixture of the flesh as possible; yet the warm currents
of feeling were never dried up in his nature, but bubbled up freshly to
the end. He lived largely on the heights of life, yet he was not
uncharitable to the weaknesses and follies he saw everywhere about him,
but rather looked upon them with a half-pitying tenderness; and he
dropped a tear occasionally where the integrity of his own nature
counselled a stern reproof.
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