Thaddeus of Warsaw | Page 6

achievements which amaze everybody but their
accomplisher. The eye fixed on it is what divine truth declares it to be
"single!" There is no double purpose in it; no glancing to a man's own
personal aggrandizement on one side and on professing services to his
fellow-creatures on the other; such a spirit has only one aim-- Heaven!
and the eternal records of that wide firmament include within it "all
good to man."
What flattered Alexander of Macedon into a madman, and perverted
the gracious-minded Julius Caesar into usurpation and tyranny, has also
been found by Christian heroes the most perilous ordeal of their virtue;
but, inasmuch as they are Christian heroes, and not pagan men,
worshippers of false gods, whose fabled examples inculcated all these
deeds of self-absorbing vain-glory, our heroes of a "better revelation"
have no excuse for failing under their trial, and many there be who pass
through it "pure and undefiled." Such were the great Alfred of England,

Gustavus Vasa of Sweden, and his greater successor in true glory,
Gustavus Adolphus,--all champions of immutable justice and ministers
of peace. And though these may be regarded as personages beyond the
sphere of ordinary emulations, yet the same principles, or their
opposites, prevail in every order of men from the prince to the peasant;
and, perhaps, at no period of the world more than the present were
these divers principles in greater necessity to be considered, and,
according to the just conclusion, be obeyed. On all sides of us we see
public and private society broken up, as it were by an earthquake: the
noblest and the meanest passions of the human bosom at contention,
and the latter often so disguised, that the vile ambuscade is not even
suspected till found within the heart of the fortress itself. We have,
however, one veritable touchstone, that of the truest observation, "ye
shall know a tree by its fruits." Let us look round, then, for those which
bear "good fruits," wholesome to the taste as well as pleasant to the
sight, whether they grow on high altitudes or in the humbler valleys of
the earth; let us view men of all degrees in life in their actions, and not
in their pretensions,--such men as were some of the Sobieski race in
Poland, in every change of their remarkable lives. When placed at the
summit of mortal fame, surrounded by greatness and glory, and
consequent power, they evinced neither pride to others nor a sense of
self-aggrandizement in themselves; and, when under a reverse
dispensation, national misfortunes pursued them, and family sorrows
pierced their souls, the weakness of a murmur never sunk the dignity of
their sustaining fortitude, nor did the firmness of that virtue harden the
amiable sensibilities of their hearts.
To exhibit so truly heroic and endearing a portrait of what every
Christian man ought to be,--for the law of God is the same to the poor
as to the rich,--I have chosen one of that illustrious and, I believe, now
extinct race for the subject of my sketch; and the more aptly did it
present itself, it being necessary to show my hero amidst scenes and
circumstances ready to exercise his brave and generous propensities,
and to put their personal issues to the test on his mind. Hence Poland's
sadly-varying destinies seemed to me the stage best calculated for the
development of any self-imposed task.

There certainly were matters enough for the exhibition of all that
human nature could suffer and endure, and, alas! perish under, in the
nearly simultaneous but terrible regicidal revolution of France; but I
shrunk from that as a tale of horror, the work of demons in the shapes
of men. It was a conflict in which no comparisons, as between man and
man, could exist; and may God grant that so fearful a visitation may
never be inflicted on this world again. May the nations of this world lay
its warnings to their hearts!
It sprung from a tree self-corrupted, which only could produce such
fruits: the demon hierarchy of the French philosophers, who had long
denied the being of that pure and Almighty God, and who, in the
arrogance of their own deified reason, and while in utter subjection to
the wildest desires of their passions, published their profane and
polluted creed amongst all orders of the people, and the natural and
terrible consequences ensued. Ignorant before, they became like unto
their teachers, demons in their unbelief,--demons in one common envy
and hatred of all degrees above them, or around them, whose existence
seemed at all in the way of even their slightest gratification: mutual
spoliation and destruction covered the country. How often has the tale
been told me by noble refugees, sheltered on our shores from those
scenes of blood, where infamy triumphed and