ldest
solitudes, between some wood and water, on moonlight greensward, or
reading at our tents' mouth by a lamp, while two boys, my sons, slept
soundly within; and in the blindness of human nature, thus sneering
against the "gentlemen of the press," sneered myself to sleep, "shut up
in measureless content."

"Most lame and impotent conclusion!" The peace of nature in that sweet
night was weak assurance of any kindred feeling in the bosom of man. It
so happened (as I afterwards learned) that felony--_bloody_ felony--was
at that very time busy, at no great distance; that murder, that arson in
its direst character, were stamping their first damnable characters on a
province noted, through ages, for innocence and simple piety; that the
first victim to rebellion was, at that moment, bleeding to death under
the hands of those wearing the shapes of men; that victim innocent,
helpless, and--a woman!!

But of this in the course of my narrative. Sunday, September 10.

As I proceeded from Llangaddock this afternoon, in company with my son,
we found no slackness in the attendance on the chapels, which keep
rising in all directions in the principality. The groups issuing from
them, survey us with surly eyes, as _Sabbath-breakers_, for travelling
on the "Lord's day." It is curious to reflect that these very persons
who have just been listening to the preachers of a gospel of peace, with
white upturning eyes and inward groans, who present countenances deeply
marked, as it seems to us, with the spirit of severe sanctity, betrayed
by their sour looks at us, and not rarely vested in two or three
expressions _at_ us among themselves--I say, how curious a fact in the
_pathology_ of minds does it present, that these very men will (some of
them) reappear in a few hours, or days, in the characters of _felons_,
midnight rebels to law and order, redressing minor wrongs committed by a
few against themselves, by a tenfold fouler wrong against all men,
against society itself. For a _system_ which consists in defying the
laws, is a systematic waging of war against the very element that binds
men in society--it is a casting off of civilization, a return to
miserable dependence on animal strength alone, on brutish cunning, or
midnight hiding in the dark, for all we enjoy. It seems well known that
the farmers themselves are the Rebeccaites, aided by their servants, and
that _the_ Rebecca is no other than some forward booby, or worse
character, who