Could Washington and Lincoln, for example, have been actuated by the motives attributed to them by their enemies?" Like all men who have become shining marks in the annals of history, Morse could not hope to escape calumny, and in later years he was accused of actions, and motives were imputed to him, which it becomes the duty of his biographer to disprove on the broad ground of moral impossibility.

Of course, therefore, we were sincerely anxious to disprove in these experiments the presence of those discreditable elements, not only for the credit of human nature, but for the sake of the great scientific interest involved.

You remember the old theories that have never been disproved of the disintegration of matter into its atoms, of its passage through solid substances, of its reforming in a far place?

But this is emphatically untrue of Ireland, and was never more conclusively disproved than by the recent literary achievements of her daughters.