Orbed in a rainbow; and, like glories wearing,
Mercy will sit between,

Throned in celestial sheen,

With radiant feet the tissued clouds down steering,
And heaven, as at some festival,

Will open wide the gates of her high palace hall.”

Say not this is all a golden dream. It is scriptural, rational, inevitable. It is hardly now a prophetic vision, so much of it has been accomplished. The blindest-eyed can see, through the vista before him, the glad consummation. Compared with the dreary ages that are past, how brief, how pleasant the remnant hours! Gigantic sins can be brought low as in a moment. Three years ago, and the most hopeful souls in America could see no immediate end to its most awful sin. Here and there was one who said the election of Mr. Lincoln begins the end. But this gave it nearly or over a score of years in which to die. The multitude saw not even those misty mountain tops. They looked over the immense territories ruled by the masters of these sins, and no glare of sunshine greeted their eyes. Wickedness stalked crowned, haughty, through all that land.

"The free were only they

Whom power made free to execute all ills
Their hearts imagine; they alone were great

Whose passions nursed them from their cradle up

To luxury and lewdness - whom to see

Was to despise

whose aspect put to scorn

Their station's eminence. The wise, they only

Obscurely waiting till the bolts of heaven

Should break upon the land, and give them light

Whereby to walk! The innocent, alas!

Poor Innocency lay where four roads meet,

A stone upon her head, a stake driven through her.
Who that was innocent did care to live,

The hand of power did press the very
Of Innocency out."

life

That horrid shape, most said, can never die.

ries, certainly, will it flourish.

It arose in arms.

For centu-
How the

whole land trembled at the neighing of its strong ones! How we quailed and whitened at its imperial front! Never before was a nation so despised by its rebels. No epithets could body forth their scorn. Egypt did not so disdain her Hebrew slaves, nor the Philistines, with Goliath at their head, the unarmed refugees of the cliffs of Judean wilderThey had bounds to their contempt. Not so our Southern masters. "Mudsills," "greasy mechanics," whom we can drive into the ocean with a lady's riding-whip,"these were the A B C of their scorn. They looked abroad, and every aristocrat was nodding and winking approval, chief of whom in this crime against God and humanity was the aristocracy of Great Britain.

nesses.

Our hopes were in our principles, our people, and our God. They have not failed us. And the hideous iniquity which we dared not touch, which we went round and round to get at those who, sheltered behind its Gorgon-headed shield, laughed us to scorn; that Gorgon-hissing shield we at last struck at and struck through, and the monster lies prone for many a league, prone over half the land, prone forever.

Coifi, a priest of British paganism, at the time of that island's conversion, and before its present backsliding, at the risk of death from the insulted gods, rode full tilt against their temples, before a ghastly crowd, who believed instant death would be visited upon a priest who should dare, armed, to approach these shrines, and were expecting that such would be his sudden fate. But, as the poet tells us,

"He crashed

Through the inclosures, ever sacred held,

And gained the central space unharmed, and rode
Thrice round and round, and in his stirrup stood,
And with a high defiance on his lip,

Smote with a clang an Idol, monster faced;

E'en as he smote, the foul thing, reeling, fell,

And then from every heart the icy hand
Of fear was lifted.

Within the crowd a sacred fury wrought;
The deities were tumbled on the grass,

The pales and the inclosures were torn down,

And one a torch applied, and towers

Of flame rushed up, then licked the air and died,

While white-robed priests, together standing, sung:
'Down falls the wicked idol on his face-

So let all wicked gods and idols fall.'"

Thus have the fears of our monster idol been dispelled, and the demon that has burned to death screaming myriads in his arms of fire, has been smitten of God and tumbled into the lake of eternal burning, while we have stood amazed and glad beyond all power of praise. Its priestly devotees and lordly defenders are howling in sorrow and shame, defeat and destruction.

Let us not despair of further victories of the Lamb. This demon slain, there is no such other hydra cursing the earth. European tyrannies will fast follow it to its dishonored grave. Asiatic abominations and African savagery will feel the warm rays of the Sun of Righteousness, long held in disastrous eclipse by this horrific sin. They will wilt down at His presence, as when the melting fire burneth, the fire causeth the waters to boil.

Our own social sins, intemperance, Sabbath-breaking, infidelity, immorality, will be more easily restrained and extirpated after this Satan among the lesser fiends is cast into the bottomless pit and chained there forever. Our prejudices, born and fostered of him, will likewise disappear, and brotherly love and unity possess all hearts.

The glad tidings of yesterday assure the speedy overthrow of Pharaoh and his hosts. This great and growing soldier, with a rare fitness, joins his victories to our national holidays. They are thus twice blessed, in what they give to these rejoiceful days, in what of higher quality they take from their ancient worthiness, and add to their own high meed of fame. Vicksburg crowns the nation's birthday with

an undying glory, and Chattanooga, relieved of its longexultant enemies, fills the most ancient of our festal days. with the tides of exultant life. See that band creeping round the shaggy breast of yon sharp peak; amid the blasted pines, the prostrate firs, the loose stones, their perilous path they keep, up and up, till a cloud receives them out of our sight. Not a cloud of heaven, but of earth, a cloud soon to flash with unwonted brightness, to rumble with thunder-claps of death. The battle opens, rages, grows closer, hotter, deadlier. Pressing ever on and up swing the gallant troops around the last smooth precipitous wall, that sits a crown of smooth, high rock upon the mountain's brow. The rebels break and flee; along the wild edge, headlong plunges the host. The fiery Hooker is fleeter of foot. Upon the plains beneath he breaks, like torrents into which the mountain cloud seems to have burst, torrents sweeping all things in their wild and fatal flight.

Across the plains, on a low ridge, hangs a heavier cloud of war. It stretches for miles along its summit. In the valley below, with Chattanooga at its back, but a mile or two distant, on a little knob, stands a little man reconnoitering the scene. The plains are filled with mustering squadrons. Advances are made along the line up this bristling hill. Here Sherman holds his enemy by the throat, each bleeding, each firm. Then Thomas pushes forward his columns, and below Hooker sweeps up the less precipitous but more perilous sides, with his untamed daring. Day and day writhes the mighty anaconda of the plains, and the hills are wreathed in agony of strife. That point is reached at last which every great general knows, and only great generals, when, each side exhausted, that which summons all its strength crushes its foe. The word is given. The army summon up the spirits; the hill is stormed, is swept, is ours. The rebels, who but now had thought themselves invulnerable, leap from their rifle-pits and intrenchments, and fly in panic irrepressible.

This is the thanksgiving feast that the calm general sends to a nation drunken with delight. This crushes the dragon in all the region above the Gulf States, except that spot where he raises his head sparkling defiance from his green and deadly eyes. The West is free from slave or rebel, and shall be free forever.

This victory assures the end. Slavery is doomed by the fiat of the nation and the arm of Grant. They have fought with the Lamb, and the Lamb has overcome them. No State, we fondly hope and believe, can ever resume its place in the Union with this crime on its hands. Other blessings shall speedily follow- all blessings. The glory of the Lord shall cover the earth as the waters cover the Already its beams cover thick the morning sky.

sea.

"Come forth, O Light, from out the breaking East,
And with thy splendor pierce the heathen dark,
And morning make a continent and isle,
That Thou mayst reap the harvest of Thy tears,
O Holy One, who hung upon the tree."