And, in so intense a moment his demeanour would have
still been calm. Such an exhibition, however, was but to be
pictured in fancy; not to be anticipated, nor desired. What I
saw in him--as evidently as the indestructible ramparts of Old
Ticonderoga, already cited as the most appropriate simile--was
the features of stubborn and ponderous endurance, which might
well have amounted to obstinacy in his earlier days; of
integrity, that, like most of his other endowments, lay in a
somewhat heavy mass, and was just as unmalleable or unmanageable
as a ton of iron ore; and of benevolence which, fiercely as he
led the bayonets on at Chippewa or Fort Erie, I take to be of
quite as genuine a stamp as what actuates any or all the
polemical philanthropists of the age. He had slain men with his
own hand, for aught I know--certainly, they had fallen like
blades of grass at the sweep of the scythe before the charge to
which his spirit imparted its triumphant energy--but, be that as
it might, there was never in his heart so much cruelty as would
have brushed the down off a butterfly's wing. I have not known
the man to whose innate kindliness I would more confidently make
an appeal.
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