It must not be wondered at, therefore, if our simple-hearted, loving
Mary strangely found all her indignation against him gone, and herself
little disposed to criticize the impassioned tenderness with which
Madame de Frontignac still regarded him.
We have one thing more that we cannot avoid saying, of two men so
singularly in juxtaposition as Aaron Burr and Dr. Hopkins. Both had a
perfect _logic_ of life, and guided themselves with an inflexible
rigidity by it. Burr assumed individual pleasure to be the great object
of human existence; Dr. Hopkins placed it in a life altogether beyond
self. Burr rejected all sacrifice; Hopkins considered sacrifice as the
foundation of all existence. To live as far as possible without a
disagreeable sensation was an object which Burr proposed to himself as
the _summum bonum_, for which he drilled down and subjugated a nature
of singular richness. Hopkins, on the other hand, smoothed the
asperities of a temperament naturally violent and fiery by a rigid
discipline which guided it entirely above the plane of self-indulgence;
and, in the pursuance of their great end, the one watched against his
better nature as the other did against his worse. It is but fair, then,
to take their lives as the practical workings of their respective
ethical creeds.
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