" This fascination is
hard to be explained. The great seriousness of Horner's character may in
part account for it. He could not bear trifling on important subjects,
and could not help frowning on all jests which were not more wise
than witty. The calm determination, the unvarying earnestness of his
character, may aid in explaining it. From a boy, he never swerved from
great purposes, pursued the most useful though difficult knowledge, and
cultivated with equal zeal the ornaments of taste and those recondite
historical and statistical studies which are the roots of political
science. He was as far from being flighty as Immanuel Kant. Everything
that he did was marked both by temperance and sagacity. Philosophically
speaking, a personality, any personal being, is undoubtedly the most
mysterious thing in the universe. How abstract ideas come together to
grow and bloom in a young bosom is wholly past the comprehension of
philosophy. As personality in the abstract fascinates a philosopher
by its mystery, so a personality of uncommon purity, intensity, and
completeness fascinates all men, and thus, perhaps, is explained the
high estimation in which Horner was held.
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