"Sir Harry Vane, in my judgment the noblest human being who ever walked the streets of yonder city,--I do not forget Franklin or Sam Adams, Washington or Fayette, Garrison or John Brown, -but Vane dwells an arrow's flight above them all, and his touch consecrated the continent to measureless toleration of opinion and entire equality of rights. We are told we can find in Plato “all the intellectual life of Europe for two thousand years;” so you can find in Vane the pure gold of two hundred and fifty years of American civilization, with no particle of its dross. Plato would have welcomed him to the Academy, and Fenelon kneeled with him at the altar. He made Somers and John Marshall possible; like Carnot, he organized victory; and Milton pales before him in the stainlessness of his record. He stands among English statesmen preeminently the representative, in practice and in theory, of serene faith in the safety of trusting truth wholly to her own defence. For other men we walk backward, and throw over their memories the mantle of charity and excuse, saying reverently, “Remember the temptation and the age.” But Vane's ermine has no stain; no act of his needs explanation or apology; and in thought he stands abreast of our age,--like pure intellect, belongs to all time."Martyn, p. 571
