Excerpt from The Man: The Hero: The Christian: An Eulogy on the Life and Character of Thomas Clarkson, Delivered in the City of New-York, Dec, 1846

This funereal observance, melancholy as it is in its significance, has yet its softening aspects. Mournful as are the associations connected with the event which excites our regrets, yet there are many and peculiar solaces. For distressing as it is to behold the benignant sons of freedom sink, one after another, below the horizon, there is alleviation in the thought, that there were many who rejoiced in the full-orbed glory of their open day, and now that they have receded from our skies, the light they have left behind does not stream upon this generation unappreciated and disregarded. It has not always been even thus. It is but recently that the holy and the good have been able to command deserved attention. The world has been rolling on six thousand years in its course, and now, in these latter days, the Philanthropist is just beginning to obtain the regard and honor he so richly merits. During this long period, mankind absorbed in trifling and fruitless anxieties, have passed by, and neglected, the great good men of earth. The record of the past of human history, is a memorial of this shameful fact, true, with but few exceptions, equally and alike, of nearly all nations, in all periods of time.

The fragments snatched from the almost barren past of Egyptian history, relate chiefly to the murderous exploits of, a Sesostris or a Shiskah, and the remains of its high and unequalled art are the obelisks and the urns, commemorative of bloody conquerors - or the frowning pyramids, upon whose walls are the hieroglyphic representations of War, Conquest, and Slavery. The annals of Greece and Rome are but slightly varied in their aspects, and their teachings. They favor us with but few of the features of the worthy and the good. They do indeed reveal some slight touches of a slowly rising civilization, but restrained ever by the tightened grasp of a cold hearted heathenism. Their largest spaces are devoted to the exploits of infirm and furious deities, or else to the memories of men chiefly distinguished by the brutality of animal passions. And the literature they have transmitted to our day, is chiefly the gorgeous representation of sanguinary deeds, dressed up in the glowing imagery of master poets, or else the fulminations of passionate men, exciting, by wondrous oratory, to scenes of strife and vengeance. And this is the general coloring of history. In the past, its more numerous pages are given to the names and exploits of such men as Caesar, Hannibal, Alexander, and Tamerlane: and in times nearer to our own day we find it thus. The records of the middle ages are mostly narratives of Crusaders and Troubadours.

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