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to the heroic soldiers of the Union, and a degradation of their victories and well-earned laurels. It was condemned as an unpatriotic act.

Charles Sumner insult the soldiers who had spilled their blood in a war for human rights! Charles Sumner degrade victories, and depreciate laurels, won for the cause of universal freedom!-how strange an imputation!

Let the dead man have a hearing. This was his thought: No civilized nation, from the republics of antiquity down to our days, ever thought it wise or patriotic to preserve in conspicuous and durable form the mementos of victories won over fellow-citizens in civil war. Why not? Because every citizen should feel himself with all others as the child of a common country, and not as a defeated foe. All civilized governments of our days have instinctively followed the same dictate of wisdom and patriotism.

The Irishman, when fighting for old England at Waterloo, was not to behold on the red cross floating above him the name of the Boyne. The Scotch Highlander, when standing in the trenches of Sevastopol, was not by the colors of his regiment to be reminded of Culloden. No French soldier at Austerlitz or Solferino had to read upon the tricolor any reminiscence of the Vendée.* No Hungarian at Sadowa was taunted by any Austrian banner with the surrender of Villagos.+ No German regiment from Saxony or Hanover, charging under the iron hail of Gravelotte, was made to remember, by words written on a Prussian standard, that the black

* Vendee, vän(g)-dā'.
+ Villagos, vēl-yā'gos.
Gravelotte, gräv-lõt'.

eagle had conquered them at Koniggratz* and Langensalza.†

Should the son of South Carolina, when at some future day defending the Republic against some foreign foe, be reminded by an inscription on the colors floating over him, that under this flag the gun was fired that killed his father at Gettysburg? Should this great and enlightened Republic, proud of standing in the front of human progress, be less wise, less large-hearted, than the ancients were two thousand years ago, and the kingly governments of Europe are to-day?

Let the battle-flags of the brave volunteers, which they brought home from the war with the glorious record of their victories, be preserved intact as a proud ornament of our State Houses and armories; but let the colors of the army, under which the sons of all the States are to meet and mingle in common patriotism, speak of nothing but union, not a union of conquerors and conquered, but a union which is the mother of all, equally tender to all, knowing of nothing but equality, peace, and love among her children.

Do you want conspicuous mementos of your victories? They are written upon the dusky brow of every freeman who was once a slave; they are written on the gate-posts of a restored Union; and the most glorious of all will be written on the faces of a contented people, reunited in common national pride.

Such were the sentiments which inspired that resolution. Such were the sentiments which called forth a storm of obloquy. Such were the sentiments for which the Legislature of Massachusetts passed a solemn resolu

*Koniggratz, kon'ig-grětz.

Langensalza, lăng-en-sal'tsa.

tion of censure upon Charles Sumner, Massachusetts, his own Massachusetts, whom he loved so ardently with. a filial love, of whom he was so proud, who had honored him so much in days gone by, and whom he had so long and so faithfully labored to serve and to honor.

Oh! those were evil days, that winter; days sad and dark, when he sat there in his lonesome chamber, unable to leave it, the world moving around him, and in it so much that was hostile, and he- prostrated by the tormenting disease, which had returned with fresh violence

unable to defend himself, and with this bitter arrow in his heart. Why was that resolution held up to scorn and vituperation as an insult to the brave, and an unpatriotic act? Why was he not attacked and condemned for it when he first offered it, ten years before, and when he was in the fulness of manhood and power? If not then, why now? Why now?

I shall never forget the melancholy hours I sat with. him, seeking to lift him up with cheering words, and he his frame for hours racked with excruciating pain, and then exhausted with suffering-gloomily brooding over the thought that he might die so.

How thankful I am, how thankful every human soul in Massachusetts, how thankful every American must be, that he did not die then!- and, indeed, more than once death seemed to be knocking at his door, how thankful that he was spared to see the day, when the people, by striking developments, were convinced that those who had acted as he did had after all not been impelled by mere whims of vanity, or reckless ambition, or sinister designs, but had good and patriotic reasons for what they did; when the heart of Massachusetts came back to him

full of the old love and confidence, assuring him that he would again be her chosen son for her representative seat in the House of States; when the lawgivers of the old Commonwealth, obeying an irresistible impulse of justice, wiped away from the records of the Legislature, and from the fair name of the State, that resolution of censure which had stung him so deeply; and when returning vigor lifted him up, and a new sunburst of hope illumined his life! How thankful we all are that he lived that one year longer!

And yet, have you thought of it?—if he had died in those dark days, when so many clouds hung over him, would not then the much-vilified man have been the same Charles Sumner, whose death but one year later afflicted millions of hearts with a pang of bereavement, whose praise is now on every lip for the purity of his life, for his fidelity to great principles, and for the loftiness of his patriotism?

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Was he not a year ago the same, - the same in purpose, the same in principle, the same in character? What had he done then that so many who praise him to-day should have then disowned him? See what he had done. He had simply been true to his convictions of duty. He had approved and urged what he thought right; he had attacked and opposed what he thought wrong.

To his convictions of duty he had sacrificed political associations most dear to him, the security of his position of which he was proud. For his convictions of duty he had stood up against those more powerful than he; he had exposed himself to reproach, obloquy, and persecution. Had he not done so, he would not have been the man you praise to-day; and yet for doing so he was cried down but yesterday.

He had lived up to the great word he spoke when he entered the Senate, "The slave of principle, I call no party master." That declaration was greeted with applause; and when, true to his word, he refused to call a party master, the act was covered with reproach.

VII. THE CONTRAST; OR, PEACE AND WAR.

L

ATHENEUM.

PEACE.

OVELY art thou, O Peace! and lovely are thy children, and lovely are the prints of thy footsteps in the green valleys.

Blue wreaths of smoke ascend through the trees, and betray the half-hidden cottage; the eye contemplates well-thatched ricks, and barns bursting with plenty : the peasant laughs at the approach of winter.

White houses peep through the trees; cattle stand cooling in the pool; the casement of the farm-house is covered with jessamine and honeysuckle; the stately greenhouse exhales the perfume of summer climates.

Children climb the green mound of the rampart, and ivy holds together the half-demolished buttress.

The old men sit at their doors; the gossip leans over her counter; the children shout and frolic in the streets.

The housewife's stores of bleached linen, whiter than snow, are laid up with fragrant herbs; they are the pride of the matron, the toil of many a winter's night.

The wares of the merchant are spread abroad in the shops, or stored in the high-piled warehouses; the labor

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