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servants and that their country will yet say to them, "Well done!"

Sometimes, in unfamiliar countries, the traveller finds himself shrouded in fog and the way so hidden, the features of the country so singularly changed from the reality, that he cannot safely move. But if some friendly mountain side lets him ascend a few hundred feet above, he finds himself suddenly in a clear atmosphere with a blue sky and a shining sun. Below him the smaller objects that misled and bewildered him lie hidden ; before him stand out, salient and clear, the leading ridges and great outlines of the country which point out to him the right way, and show him where he may reach a place of security and repose for the night, and he goes on his journey confidently. And so it is with those men who devote their lives, unflinchingly and singly, to the public good to the maintenance of principles and the advocacy of great reforms. They live in a pure atmosphere. And such ought also to be the character of the men whom we elevate to our high places. Raised into that upper air, and charged with the general safety, they are expected to be impersonal; they are expected to see over and beyond the personal ambitions and individual interests which of necessity influence men acting individually; their horizon is universal, and they see broadly defined the great principles which lead a nation continuously on to a settled prosperity and a sure glory. And as a condition of our material safety we should see to it that only such men are put in such places. Men capable of receiving a conviction and realizing a necessity - men able to comprehend the spirit of the age and the country in which we live, and fearless in working up to it.

J. C. Fremont.

THE

CCLXXII.

PUBLIC RUMOR.

HE counsel for the prosecution has said that if the Reverend defendant has not been duly charged with heretical teachings by actual evidence, he has been so charged by public rumor; and he gravely contends that a clergyman charged by public rumor may be required to exculpate himself before an ecclesiastical council.

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There is a passion known among men as the most eager, implacable, remorseless of passions, a moral curiosity, named by psychologists the odium theologicum. It thrives on the slightest possible food. It lives on air. Public rumor is substantial enough for its richest diet. Public Rumor! I was educated to despise it. An established public opinion, we must treat with due respect, but disparaging rumor, however public, I should be ashamed to own as a motive for one action of my life. When the counsel for the prosecution passed his eulogy on the memory of Dr. Croswell, I could not but think what a rebuke his whole life was to public rumor. If ever man was the destined victim of public rumor, that man was WILLIAM CROSWELL. Not left to its low haunts, but elevated by Episcopal sanction, promulgated by Episcopal proclamation, it charged him with teaching doctrines and observances "degrading to the character of the Church and perilling the souls of the people." But in patience and confidence he lived it all down. He went forward in the discharge of his noble duties, in daily prayers, daily public service, daily ministrations to the poor, sick and afflicted, not without much suffering from the relentless attacks of party spirit, sufferings which shortened his days on earth, and the daily beauty of his life made ugly the countenance of detraction and defamation. Public confidence, a plant of slow growth, grew about him. Public justice was rendered to him without a movement of his own. He fell, at his post, with all his armor on. At the time of the evening sacrifice, the angel touched him and he was called away. He fell, with his face to the altar, with the words of benediction on his lips, surrounded by a devoted congregation, mourned by an entire community. All men rose up and called him blessed. From the distinguished Rector of St. Paul's, exclaiming, in the words of the prophet, "My father, my father, the chariots of Isr and the horsemen thereof!" to the humble orphan child in the obscure alley, who missed his daily returning visit, all, all, with one accord, sent up their voices as incense to Heaven.

I had the privilege to be one of the number who received him on his entrance into this city, to take charge of his newly formed parish. I am proud and grateful to remember that I was one of those on whom, in his long struggle, in a measure, according

to my ability, he leaned for support. And after seven years, I believe seven years to the very day, that we received him, I had the melancholy privilege, with that same company, of bearing his body up that aisle which he had so often ascended in his native dignity and in the beauty of holiness.

I should be an unworthy parishioner, pupil, I may say friend of his, if I allowed myself to defer for a moment to public rumor on a question of character or principle. I should be forgetful of his example if I permitted any one to do so who looked to me for counsel or direction. No, gentlemen, let us all, laymen or clergymen, call to mind his life and his death, and let public rumor blow past us as the idle wind. R. H. Dana, Jr.

CCLXXIII.

THE POLITICAL ENFRANCHISEMENT OF THE NORTH.

MR.

R. CHAIRMAN: Will the people of the Free States unite in one earnest effort to recover their personal and political equality, and to retrieve the honor of the country? It must be done! But, let us not deceive ourselves. The task is no easy one. Oligarchies have ruled the world. Our national government has always been qualified by the element of a slaveholding aristocracy. This aristocracy is powerful, - powerful in its unity of interest, the common slave property, with its values and its perils. It is powerful in its character as a caste. Unlike all other modern aristocracies it is a caste, and the most formidable, exclusive and ineradicable of all castes -a caste founded on race and color. It is powerful in the ordinary elements of power which oligarchies possess. The slaveholding education gives elements of control, the bearing and habit of command, and the assertion of superiority. This exercises its influence over weak minds. People doubtful of their own gentility bow to the established aristocracy of slavery. The thing that hath been is that which shall be, and there is no new thing under the sun.

What forces are we to bring into the field against them? the divided, heterogeneous masses of a free and equal people. The vast class of the timid, mercenary and time-serving belong

to the strongest. Slavery has had them. We shall never have them until we show ourselves the strongest. Will the trading and moneyed interests, so powerful in the Northern cities, do their duty? Is there force enough, virtue enough, in our thirteen millions to assert their political equality, to achieve their own enfranchisement, to make freedom national and slavery sectional; to secure the future to freedom? The few next years will answer this question. You appeal to the spirit of 1776. Remember that the Dutch revolution was as glorious as our Holland began in civil and religious liberty, with heroism, freedom, industry and prosperity. In time the Dutch learned to make material interests their ruling motive. They ceased to live for ideas, and where are they now? Prosperous, educated, industrious and despised! The high tone, the glory -is gone!

own.

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of New Eng

But is such to be the fate of Massachusetts, land? Massachusetts, in times past, has lived and suffered for ideas, for principles, for abstractions. Powerful influences have been exerted, from the highest quarters, to bring her into subjection to material interests and unheroic maxims, to sap the chivalry and enthusiasm of her youth. But it is not too late. Let her slough this all off, in her hour of trial! Let her cast off her disguises and her rags together, and stand forth in the garb and attitude of a hero! This work must be done. If the men of scholarship and accomplishments and wealth who have heretofore enjoyed prominence, do not feel themselves up to the work, the people will call the cobbler from his stall, the factory-boy from his loom, the yeoman from his plough, but the work shall be done. Fishermen and tent-makers renovated the world. The Roman centurion was sent to a fisherman who lodged at the house of a tanner by the sea-side, to hear what should be done for mankind.

Why do we hesitate? What provocation more do we propose to wait for? They have added Slave States by a coup d'état shall we wait until they have added Cuba and Mexico? They are forcing slavery upon the Territories: must we wait until they have succeeded? They have violated one solemn compact how many more must they break before we assert our right? They have struck down a Senator in his place. They

are already designating the next victim: must we wait until he has fallen? The Senator from Georgia spoke truth when he said the deed was done in the right time and right manner. There needed an act as bad as it could be made to rouse the Ispirit of the North. Let the priest be slain at the altar-stone. Let these Herods mingle blood with their sacrifices. It is needed. We have been so long servient that the spirit of freedom must be roused by violence. It is not fit that the land of the Pilgrims should bear the shame longer! By the duty we owe to justice and liberty throughout the world, by the natural pride of men, by the cultivated honor of gentlemen, it is not fit that we bear the shame longer!

R. H. Dana, Jr.

Ο

CCLXXIV.

THE EDUCATION OF THE WAR.

VER and above the ordinary and universal means of intellectual development, the Divine Providence, now and then, prepares extraordinary means to the same end, in those social convulsions and calamities that shake whole nations with the mighty upheavals of thought and passion. A war of secession and disintegration is upon us. The nation's integrity and its very life are at stake. It is an epoch that the most sluggish minds cannot sleep through. They who never thought before must think now. They who never felt before must feel now. The intellect of the nation is aroused in the presence of this immense issue. It is an educational epoch. Its perils, trials, sacrifices, are the school-discipline of God. The mind of the people grows up whole cubits of stature in a short time. The heart of the people is moved to its deepest depths, of all classes, but most of the most numerous and the governing class, the agricultural. And the heart is always the head's best ally. Deep feeling begets strong thinking. Sentiments of patriotism and loyalty, newborn and fervid, awaken and reinforce the intellect, raise up character, enlarge the whole man. And this reviving and reinvigorating influence will not pass away with the trials that produced it. When God educates, it is not for a day, but for generations. When He quickens a new life in the soul

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