n a single phrase, and a sentence or two of
explanation, tell a whole history. This is the class John Bunyan wrote
for before the bishops had his Allegory in presentable calf and
gold-leaf,--before England knew that her poor tinker had shaped a
pictured urn for her full of such visions as no dreamer had seen since
Dante. This is the class that believes in John Bright and Richard Cobden
and all the defenders of true American principles. It absorbs
intelligence as melting ice renders heat latent; there is no living
power directly generated with which we can move pistons and wheels, but
the first step in the production of steam-force is to make the ice
fluid. No intellectual thermometer can reveal to us how much ignorance
or prejudice has melted away in the fire of Mr. Beecher's passionate
eloquence, but by-and-by this will tell as a working-force. The
non-voter's conscience will reach the Privy Council, and the hand of the
ignorant, but Christianized laborer trace its own purpose in the letters
of the royal signature.

We are living in a period, not of events only, but of epochs. We are in
the transition-stage from the miocene to the pliocene period of human
existence. A new heaven is forming over our head behind the curtain of
clouds which rises from our smoking battle-fields. A new earth is
shaping itself under our feet amidst the tremors and convulsions that
agitate the soil upon which we tread. But there is no such thing as a
surprise in the order of Nature. The kingdom of God, even, cometh not
with observation.

The visit of an overworked clergyman to Europe is not in appearance an
event of momentous interest to the world. The fact that he delivered a
few speeches before British audiences might seem to merit notice in a
local paper or two, but is of very little consequence, one would say, to
the British nation, compared to the fact that Her Majesty took an airing
last Wednesday, or of much significance to Americans, by the side of the
fact that his Excellency, Governor Seymour, had written a letter
recommending the Union Fire Company always to play on the wood-shed when
the house is in flames.

But, in point of fact, this unofficial visit of a private citizen--in
connection with these addresses delivered to miscellaneous crowds by an
envoy not extraordinary and a minister nullipotentiary, for all that his
credentials showed--was an event of national importance. It was much
more than this; it was the beginning of a