e traitor, doubt. But this is
only the prologue of our great drama. Allen leaps first upon the
scene, bucklered as no warrior ever was since the days of Homer or
before. Then Arnold comes flying in, wresting laurels from
defeat,--Arnold, who died too late. Here Schuyler walks up at night,
his military soul vexed within him by the sleeping guards and the
intermittent sentinels, his gentle soul harried by the rustic
ill-breeding of his hinds, his magnanimous soul cruelly tortured by the
machinations of jealousy and envy and evil-browed ambition. Yonder on
the hill Burgoyne's battery threatens death, and Lincoln avenges us of
Burgoyne. Let the curtain fall; a bloodier scene shall follow.

* * * * *

And then we re-embark on Lake Champlain, and all the summer afternoon
sail down through phantom fleets, under the frowning ramparts of
phantom forts, past grim rows of deathful-throated cannon, through
serried hosts of warriors, with bright swords gleaming and strong arms
lifted and stern lips parted; but from lips of man or throat of cannon
comes no sound. A thousand oars strike through the leaping waves, but
not a plash breaks on the listening ear. A thousand white sails swell
to the coming breeze, that brings glad greeting from the inland hills,
but nothing breaks the silences of time.

And of all beautiful things that could have been thought of or hoped
for, what should come to crown our queen of days but a thunder-storm, a
most real and vivid thunder-storm, marshalling up from the west its
grand, cumulose clouds; black, jagged, bulging with impatient, prisoned
thunder biding their time, sharp and fierce against the brilliant sky,
spreading swiftly over the heavens, fusing into one great gray pall,
dropping a dim curtain of rain between us and the land, closing down
upon us a hollow hemisphere pierced with shafts of fire and deafening
with unseen thunders, wresting us off from the friendly skies and
shores, wrapping us into an awful solitude. O Princess Rohan, come to
me! come from the hidden caves, where you revel in magical glories,
come up from your coralline caves in the mysterious sea, come from
those Eastern lands of nightingale, roses, and bulbuls, where your
tropical soul was born and rocked in the lap of the lotus! O sunny
Southern beauty, lost amongst Northern snows, flush forth in your
mystical splendor from the ruby wine of Hafiz, float down from your
clouds of the sunset with shining garmen