1856. The 3Ian for tJie Times, 403 



and field, and the scientific man shake hands at least with the opera- 

 tor — the one to furnish statistics, the other to arrange and classify, 

 and therefrom adduce valuable discoveries. In short, we want men 

 so educated, as, understanding the wants of our great country, would 

 be enabled to take warning from the beacon-lights that blaze over 

 past political disasters. When every man invested with the elective 

 franchise, shall be enabled not only to read his vote, and know the 

 party for which it is given, but to know for himself who ought to 

 govern him, and how he should be governed, and be able to detect 

 and prevent the intrigues of demagogues, who would direct and con- 

 trol our national, foreign, and domestic policy. 



Fourth, An American in this age should be a man of comprehen- 

 sive views, and large sympathies — a man neither of half a heart, nor 

 half an idea — one whose well-disciplined mind no particular superficial 

 view of a subject could satisfy. A man of progress; one who could 

 see in the mighty movements that are going on, indications that as yet 

 the race is in the infancy of an oncoming and giant manhood, who 

 have no sympathy with old things because they are old. Who are 

 something more than overslept watchmen, looming out witti their 

 lanterns when the east is flashing with the light of the rising sun ; 

 whose type is not Lot's tci'/e, looking back everlastingly to Sodom; 

 but rather Lot himself, with his eye lifted to the mountains, with 

 countenance beaming with hope and expectation. 



Fifth, A man for this age and this country should be a zealously 

 earnest man. By this we do not mean excitable. Of this class we 

 have enough. The American character, altogether discordant and 

 chaotic in its multiplied elements, yet holds elements in combination, 

 in the language of the chemist, only by hot fusion. 



In the universal furor with which we enter into all opposite and 

 antagonistic pursuits of politics and money making, fanatical piety 

 and frenzied scepticism, hero-worship and hyper-religious bigotry, in- 

 fidel socialism and great moral reforms ; the intense excitability of 

 our youth is a mystery quite incomprehensible by the stolid and 

 superannuated philosophy of the Old World. But such excitability 

 is not the earnestness for which we would plead. We seek rather a 

 chemical union than an igneous fusion — a union of homogeneous and 

 consistent elements — such an earnestness as would discard mere spas- 

 modic feeling, and supplant it by a constant inspiration of a mighty 

 master passion. Not a whirlwind raising a waterspout, but a steady 

 sweep, rousing the whole sluggish ocean into billowy and resistless 

 life. Our age requires men of action, and the question now is to 



