text:  Gifted with powers eminently fitted for severe investigation--apt for learning and learned beyond most men--of a temper adverse and rebellious to an assumed and ungrounded control--large-hearted and large-minded to comprehend the diverse interests of men--personally fearless--devout in the highest and boldest sense of the word; namely as acknowledging no supreme law but from heaven and as confiding in the immediate communication of divine assistance to the faithful servants of heaven--possessing moreover in amplest measure that peculiar endowment of sovereign poets which enables them to stand up as the teachers of a lofty and tender wisdom as moral prophets to the species the clear faculty of profound self-inspection--he was prepared to share in the intellectual strife and change of that day even had some interposing pacific angel charmed away from the bosom of the land all other warfare and revolution--and to shine in that age's work even had the muse never smiled upon his cradled forehead never laid the magical murmurs of song on his chosen lips