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George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 5, 13th edition., Chapter 2: (search)
e so ready to renounce pleasure, and risk life for a caprice, or sacrifice it for glory. Self-indulgent, they abounded in offices of charity. Often exhibiting the most heartless egoism, they were also easily inflamed, with a most generous enthusiasm. Seemingly lost in profligate sensuality, they were yet capable of contemplative asceticism. To the superficial observer, they were a nation of atheists; and yet they preserved the traditions of their own Bossuet and Calvin, of Descartes and Fenelon. In this most polished and cultivated land,—whose government had just been driven out from North America, whose remaining colonies collectively had but about seventy thousand white persons, whose commerce with the New World could only be a consequence of American Independence,—two opposite powers competed for supremacy; on the one side monarchy, claiming to be absolute; on the other, free thought, which was becoming the mistress of the world. Absolute power met barriers on every side.