our wrath.
But he shrinks and crouches before us when, bold and fearless, we lift
the cross of truth, and bid him fly the upborne might of our
intelligence. Mephistopheles is an unholy spirit, nestling in the hearts
of myriads of poor human beings who never heard of Goethe. Long after
the mimic scene in which he shares shall have been forgot,--long after
the sirens who have warbled poor Gretchen's joys and sorrows shall have
mouldered in their graves,--long after the witching beauty of the
Frenchman's harmony shall have been forever hushed,--long after the very
language in which the German poet portrayed him shall have passed into
oblivion,--will Mephistopheles carry his diabolisms into the souls of
human kind, and hold there his mystic reign. Yet there are those, and
you find Asmodeus is one, who dream of a day when the Mephistophelean
dynasty is to be overthrown,--when the sappers and miners of the great
army of human progress are to besiege him in his strong-holds, and to
lead him captive in eternal bondage. Of all the guides who lead that
mighty host, none rank above the Faust of whom tradition tells such
wondrous tales. Not the bewigged and motley personage Gounod has sung,
not the impassioned lover Goethe drew, but the great genius who first
taught mankind to stamp its wisdom in imperishable characters, and to
bequeath it unto races yet to rise. The Faust of history shall long
outlive the Faust of wild romance. The victim in the transient poem
shall be a conqueror in the unwritten chronicles of time.

My dear Madam, let us draw around us a charmed circle; not with the
trenchant point of murderous steel, but with the type that Faust gave to
the world. Within its bounds, intelligence and thought shall guard us
safe from Mephistopheles. Come he in whatever guise he may, its subtile
potency shall, like Ithuriel's spear, compel him to display his real
form in all its native ugliness and dread. And we must pass away; yet
may we leave behind, secure in the defence we thus may raise, the dear
ones that we love, to be the parents of an angel race that, in the
distant days to come, shall tread the sod above our long-forgotten dust.

MR. HOSEA BIGLOW'S SPEECH IN MARCH MEETING.

Jaalam, April 5, 1866.

MY DEAR SIR,--

(an' noticin' by your kiver thet you're some dearer than wut you wuz, I
enclose the diffrence) I dunno ez I know jest how to interdroce this
las' perduction of my mews, ez Parson Willber allus