to Damascus “At midday, O king, I saw in the way a light from Heaven above the brightness of the fun!" He fell to the ground, blinded and terrified! He rose to his feet, converted and transformed! I pray God that at this hour of midday, at this solemn and awful moment of death, this nation may be struck down upon its knees, by the sudden glory of God bursting out of Heaven- and that it may be humbled in the dust until it shall rise repentant, and the scales shall fall from its eyes, and the whole nation shall stand at last in the light and liberty of the sons of God! (Applause and hisses, during which Mr. Tilton took his seat.)

Charan Sita

9

That Bloomed on the Day of John Brown's Martyrdom.

In the long silence of the night,
Nature's benignant power
Woke aspirations for the light
Within the folded flower.
Its presence and the gracious day
Made summer in the room,
But woman's eyes shed tender dew
On the little rose in bloom.

Then blossomed forth a grander flower,
In the wilderness of wrong,
Untouched by Slavery's bitter frost,
A soul devout and strong.
God-watched, that century plant uprose,
Far shining through the gloom,
Filling a nation with the breath
Of a noble life in bloom.

A life so powerful in its truth,
A nature so complete;

It conquered ruler, judge and priest,
And held them at its feet.

Death seemed proud to take a soul

So beautifully given,

And the gallows only proved to him
A stepping-stone to heaven.

Each cheerful word, each valiant act,

So simple, so sublime,

Spoke to us through the reverent hush

Which sanctified that time.

That moment when the brave old man

Went so serenely forth,

With footsteps whose unfaltering tread
Reechoed through the North.

The sword he wielded for the right
Turns to a victor's palm;

His memory Bounds forever more,

A spirit-stirring psalm.

No breath of shame ran touch his shield,

Nor ages dim its shine;

Living, he made life beautiful,—

Dying, made death divine.

No monument of quarried stone,
No eloquence of speech,
Can grave the lessons on the land

His martyrdom will teach.
No eulogy like his own words,
With hero-spirit rife,

"I truly serve the cause I love,

By yielding up my life."

L M. Alcott.

VI.

LETTERS OF VICTOR HUGO.

HAUTEVILLE HOUSE, Dec. 2, 1859.

IR: When one thinks of the United States of America, a

majestic figure rises to the mind—Washington. Now, in that country of Washington, see what is going on at this hour!

There are slaves in the Southern States, a fact which strikes with indignation, as the most monstrous of contradictions, the reasonable and freer conscience of the Northern States. These slaves, these negroes, a white man, a free man, one John Brown, wanted to deliver. Certainly, if insurrection be ever a sacred duty, it is against Slavery. Brown wished to begin the good work by the deliverance of the slaves in Virginia. Being a Puritan, a religious and austere man, and full of the Gospel, he cried aloud to these menhis brothers the cry of emancipation "Christ has set us free!" The slaves, enervated by Slavery, made no response to his appeal — Slavery makes deafness in the soul. Brown, finding himself abandoned, fought with a handful of heroic men; he struggled; he fell, riddled with bullets; his two young sons, martyrs of a holy cause, dead at his side. This is what is called the Harper's Ferry affair.

John Brown, taken prisoner, has just been tried, with four of his fellows-Stephens, Coppoc, Green, and Copeland. What sort of trial it was, a word will tell.

Brown, stretched upon a truckle bed, with six half-closed

wounds -a gun-shot wound in his arm, one in his loins, two in the chest, two in the head-almost bereft of hearing, bleeding through his mattress, the spirits of his two dead sons attending him; his four fellow-prisoners crawling around him; Stephens with four sabre wounds; "Justice" in a hurry to have done with the case; an attorney, Hunter, demanding that it be despatched with sharp speed; a Judge, Parker, absenting; the defence cut short; scarcely any delay allowed; forged or garbled documents put in evidence; the witnesses for the prisoner shut out; the defence clogged; two guns, loaded with grape, brought into the court, with an order to the jailers to shoot the prisoners in case of an attempt at rescue; forty minutes' deliberation; three sentences to death. I affirm, on my honor, that all this took place, not in Turkey, but in America.

Such things are not done, with impunity in the face of the civilized world. The universal conscience of mankind is an

ever-watchful eye. Let the Judge of Charlestown, and Hunter, and Parker, and the slave-holding jurors, and the whole population of Virginia, ponder it well: they are seen! They are not alone in the world. At this moment the gaze of Europe is fixed on America.

John Brown, condemned to die, was to have been hanged on the 2d of December—this very day. But news has this instant reached us. A respite is granted him. It is not until the 16th that he is to die. The interval is short. Has a cry of mercy time to make itself heard? No matter. duty to lift up the voice.

It is a

Perhaps a second respite may be granted. America is a noble land. The sentiment of humanity is soon quickened among a free people. We hope that Brown may be saved. If it were otherwise—if Brown should die on the scaffold on the 16th of December- what a terrible calamity!

The executioner of Brown — let us avow it openly (for the day of the kings is past, and the day of the people dawns, and

to the people we are bound frankly to speak the truth) — the executioner of Brown would be neither, the Attorney Hunter, nor the Judge Parker, nor the Governor Wise, nor the State of Virginia; it would be, we say it, and we think rt with a shudder, the whole American Republic.

The more one loves, the more one admires, the more one reveres the Republic, the more heart-sick one feels at such a catastrophe. A single State ought not to have the power to dishonor all the rest, and in this ease federal intervention is a clear right. Otherwise, by hesitating to interfere when it might prevent a crime, the Union becomes an accomplice. No matter how intense may be the indignation of the generous Northern States, the Southern States associate them with the disgrace of this murder. All of us, whosoever we may be-for whom the democratic cause is a common country — feel ourselves in a manner compromised and hurt. If the scaffold should be erected on the 16th of December, the incorruptible voices of history would thenceforward testify that the august confederation of the New World had added to all its ties of holy brotherhood a brotherhood of blood, and the fasces of that splendid Republic would be bound together with the running noose that hung from the gibbet of Brown.

This is a bond that kills.

When we reflect on what Brown, the liberator, the champion of Christ, has striven to effect, and when we remember that he is about to die, slaughtered by the American Republic, the crime assumes the proportions of the Nation which commits it; and when we say to ourselves that this Nation is a glory of the human race; that- like France, like England, like Germany-she is one of the organs of civilization; that she sometimes even out-marches Europe by the sublime audacity of her progress; that she is the queen of an entire world; and that she bears on her brow an immense light of freedom; we affirm that John Brown will not die; for we recoil, horror-struck, from the idea of so great a crime committed by so great a People,