Of all the qualities of a great man of his age, he was only wanting in honesty.

The people were not his devotees, but his instruments,--his own glory was the god of his idolatry; his faith was posterity; his conscience existed but in his thought; the fanaticism of his idea was quite human; the chilling materialism of his age had crushed in his heart the expansion, force, and craving for imperishable things.

His dying words were "sprinkle me with perfumes, crown me with flowers, that I may thus enter upon eternal sleep." He was especially of his time, and his course bears no impress of infinity.

Neither his character, his acts, nor his thoughts have the brand of immortality.

If he had believed in God, he might have died a martyr, but he would have left behind him the religion of reason and the reign of democracy.