re of a
wide-built town, has his hour for play with his little ones, his
evenings for his wife and his friends. But for the statesman, none of
these are the pleasures of every day. Week after week, month after
month, he can have no eyes for the freshness of nature, no leisure for
small affairs, or for talk about things which cannot be called affairs
at all. He may gaze at pictures on his walls, and hear music from the
drawing-room, in the brief intervals of his labours; and he may now and
then be taken by surprise by a glimpse of the cool bright stars, or by
the waving of the boughs of some neighbouring tree. He may be beguiled
by the grace or the freak of some little child, or struck: by some
wandering flower scent in the streets, or some effect of sunlight on the
evening cloud. But with these few and rare exceptions, he loses sight
of the natural earth, and of its free intercourses, for weeks and months
together; and precious in proportion--precious beyond its utmost
anticipation--are his hours of holiday when at length they come. He
gazes at the crescent moon hanging above the woods, and at the long
morning shadows on the dewy grass, as if they would vanish before his
eyes. He is intoxicated with the gurgle of the brook upon the stones,
when he seeks the trout stream with his line and basket. The whirring
of the wild bird's wing upon the moor, the bursting of the chase from
cover, the creaking of the harvest wain--the song of the vine-dressers--
the laugh of the olive-gatherers--in every land where these sounds are
heard, they make a child once more of the statesman who may for once
have come forth to hear them. Sweeter still is the leisure hour with
children in the garden or the meadow, and the quiet stroll with wife or
sister in the evening, or the gay excursion during a whole day of
liberty. If Sunday evenings are sweet to the labourer whose toils
involve but little action of mind, how precious are his rarer holidays
to the state labourer, after the wear and tear of toil like his--after
his daily experience of intense thought, of anxiety, and fear! In the
path of such should spring the freshest grass, and on their heads should
fall the softest of the moonlight, and the balmiest of the airs of
heaven, if natural rewards are in any proportion to their purchase money
of toil.

The choicest holiday moments of the great negro statesman were those
which he could spend with his wife and children, away from obs