vocate of freedom to the slave, has rarely been regarded as either a
trustworthy or an important man in the party which has represented his
principles in this country. He has always been too free to be a
partisan, too radical and intractable for a party seeking power or
striving to preserve it. No party of any considerable magnitude has ever
regarded him as its expositor. A thousand times have party-speakers and
party-organs, professing principles identical with his own, washed their
hands of all responsibility for his utterances. Even now, when the
sound of falling shackles is in the air, and the smoke of the torment of
the oppressor fills the sky, old partisans of freedom cannot quite
forget their stupid and hackneyed animosities, but still bemoan the
baleful influence of this fiery itinerant. Representative of none but
himself, disowned or hated by all parties, acknowledging responsibility
to God and his own conscience only, he has done his work, and done it
well,--done it amid careful questionings and careless curses,--done it,
and been royally paid for it, when speakers who fairly represented the
political and religious prejudices of the people could not have called
around them a baker's dozen, with tickets at half-price or at no price
at all.

When the cloud which now envelops the country shall gather up its
sulphurous folds and roll away, tinted in its retiring by the smile of
God beaming from a calm sky upon a nation redeemed to freedom and
justice, and the historian, in the light of that smile, shall trace home
to their fountains the streams of influence and power which will then
join to form the river of the national life, he will find one, starting
far inland among the mountains, longer than the rest and mightier than
most, and will recognize it as the confluent outpouring of living,
Christian speech, from ten thousand lecture-platforms, on which free men
stood and vindicated the right of man to freedom.

THE HOUR OF VICTORY.

Meridian moments! grandly given
To cheer the warrior's soul from heaven!
God's ancient boon, vouchsafed to those
Who battle long with Freedom's foes,--
Oh, what in life can claim the power
To match with that divinest hour?

I see the avenging angel wave
His banner o'er the embattled brave;
I hear above Hate's trumpet-blare
The shout that rends the smoking air,
And then I know at whose command
The victor sweeps the Rebel lan