Points of Friction
conservatism, is essential to orderly advance. It is a force in the social and political, as well as in the natural order. A party of progress, a party of stability,—call them by what names we please,—they will play their rôles to the end. The hopefulness of the reformer (Savonarola's bonfire of vanities is an historic precedent for Hawthorne's allegory) is balanced by the patience of the conservative, which has survived the disappointments of time, and is not yet exhausted. He at least knows that "the chief parts of human doom and duty are eternal," and that the things which can change are not the things essential to the support of his soul. We stand at the door of a new day, and are sanguine or affrighted according to our temperaments; but this day shall be transient as the days which have preceded it, and, like its predecessors, shall plead for understanding and pardon before the bar of history.
