dignifying

“Let it be remembered that whilst memory travelled over more than four thousand years of the history of man, it could not light upon an age more dignifying to human nature than the present.”

“Besides the irresistible contagion of his merriment, the flashes of wit, the tenderness of his sentiment, the wild laughter of his satiric scorn of cant, and priestcraft, and self-righteousness, the ardor of his patriotism, the gayety of his social songs, there is a tone in his graver writing which breathes over the hearts of his countrymen, and of all the world, the highest and most dignifying feeling that ever hallowed the heart of man.”