, no abdication of
an inherited throne to stand on a level with the unthinking crowd and
receive its worthless applauses. Rather the crowd is bidden higher, to
enter upon its own rightful, royal possessions. This is the true
missionary work. Manhood and womanhood in their best development are the
theme of the book; and they are touched with so fine a grace, outlined
with so true a pencil, tinted with so imperial a splendor, that the most
discontented may be satisfied. Does this seem slight praise? In truth it
can most rarely be bestowed. Why, it is matter for thanksgiving when we
are not outraged!

On this Field of the Cloth of Gold rises a knight without fear and
without reproach. Purely human and most heroic, as unpretending as
spotless, womanly, gentle, yet of positive and aggressive strength,
strength to do silently, to endure steadfastly, to die conquered, yet
victorious, to live in the front, yet alone,--is it an ideal character?
So much the more let it be studied, that our souls may absorb it and
produce the reality: for it is ideal after no impossible sort. In his
simple purity, in his fidelity to right, in his chivalry and his
religion, he is only what all can be. It is an American boy, called to
no loftier living, to no more "extraordinary seeking," than his country
has a right to claim from all her sons,--called to no sterner sacrifice,
to no severer suffering, than many a brave lad has faced and may yet
face again. If we could read the silent history of these last years,
should we not find in thousands of young hearts the story of a resolve
no less firm, of a pain scarcely less deadly? The pent-up agony in the
prison-house of Slavery before Northern cannon thundered at its doors is
a tale that will never be told. God grant its horrors may never be
surpassed,--never renewed! But we cannot say that Herman's woe is too
highly wrought. We cannot console ourselves with thinking, that, however
vividly delineated, it is mere fictitious suffering. We know that such
things have happened,--yes, and things immeasurably worse. We know that
Herman did only what any high and clear-souled man ten years ago might
have owed to do, and that he suffered only the natural consequences of
such doing. Ten years ago this country of ours was so that a man might
legally and without redress be tortured to death for doing that which
was not merely a plain obedience to the plainest precepts of the Bible,
but what in any other Christian