But this happy result was due entirely to their training.

It would be wonderful, indeed, if such an education, toil and watch, patient endurance of sickness and suffering, sustained only by sympathy with one another and a humble reliance upon divine mercy, should not produce many perfect characters--men like Francis Marion, the beautiful symmetry of whose moral structure leaves us nothing to regret in the analysis of his life.

Uncompromising in the cause of truth, stern in the prosecution of his duties, hardy and fearless as the soldier, he was yet, in peace, equally gentle and compassionate, pleased to be merciful, glad and ready to forgive, sweetly patient of mood, and distinguished throughout by such prominent virtues, that, while always sure of the affections of followers and comrades, he was not less secure in the unforced confidence of his enemies, among whom his integrity and mercy were proverbial.

By their fruits, indeed, shall we know this community, the history of which furnishes as fine a commentary upon the benefit of good social training for the young--example and precept happily keeping concert with the ordinary necessities and performances of life, the one supported by the manliest courage, the other guided by the noblest principle--as any upon record.* * It is one of the qualifications of the delight which an historian feels while engaged in the details of those grateful episodes which frequently reward his progress through musty chronicles, to find himself suddenly arrested in his narrative by some of those rude interruptions by which violence and injustice disfigure so frequently, in the march of history, the beauty of its portraits.

One of these occurs to us in this connection.