text:  The true ability of the empire must scorn all mimic encounter; and what else can be the little struggles of party shut up in the legislature whose sound scarcely transpires through the walls whose triumphs are a tax and whose oracles are an intrigue? But when the true day of trial shall come--when an enemy shall be seen hovering on the coasts of the Constitution--when trumpet answers trumpet and the "country is proclaimed in danger"--then and not till then shall we know the superb resources of our intellectual strength: whatever may have been the prowess of the past we may see it not merely rivaled but thrown into eclipse by the future; the burnished armour and massive swords and maces of our old intellectual chivalry superseded by more manageable and more destructive implements of success; and the sterner conflict followed by the more consummate triumph