speech in the Trent case. He had a most difficult task. He had to reconcile a people smarting under the sting of English disdain and dislike to meet an insolent demand to give up men we had taken from an English ship, when every man in the United States believed England would have taken them from us in a like case; and to do this not only without dishonor, but so as to turn an apparent defeat into victory. The English cabinet, as is often the case with men who act arrogantly, acted hastily. They put their demand and their menace of war on grounds which justified us and put them in the wrong on the great contention which had existed from the beginning of our government. The United States had been, till the outbreak of the civil war, and hoped to be forever after that war was over, a great neutral power. She was concerned to establish the immunity of the decks of her ships. Sumner saw and seized our opportunity. Great as was the influence of President Lincoln, it seems unlikely that even his authority would have reconciled the American people to the surrender of Mason and Slidell without the support of Sumner. It would certainly have been a terrible strain upon his administration.

None of these speeches bears the marks of haste. In general no important consideration is overlooked and no important authority fails to be cited. Several of them were addressed to the Senate at a time when in the beginning he was able to convince scarcely anybody but himself. But in the end Senate and people came to his opinion.

Let me repeat what I said in reviewing Mr. Pierce's admirable biography:—

"Let us hope that these volumes will always be a text-book for Americans. Let successive generations be brought up on the story of the noble life of Charles Sumner. Let the American youth think of these things. They are things true, honest, just, lovely, and of good report. There is virtue in them and praise, if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise. They do not belong to fiction, but to history. It is no Grecian, or Roman, or English heroism that the youth is invited to study. Charles Sumner belongs to us. His youth was spent under a humble American roof. His training was in an American school and college. He sleeps in American soil. He is ours, wholly and altogether. His figure will abide in history like that of St. Michael in art, an emblem of celestial purity, of celestial zeal, of celestial courage. It will go down to immortality with its foot upon the dragon of slavery, and with the sword of the spirit in its hand, but with a tender light in its eye, and a human love in its smile. Guido and Raphael conceived their 'inviolable saint,'

"'Invulnerable, impenetrably armed;

Such high advantages his innocence

Gave him above his foe; not to have sinned,

Not to have disobeyed; in fight he stood

Unwearied, unobnoxious, to be pained

By wounds.'

The Michael of the painters, as a critic of genius akin to their own has pointed out, rests upon his prostrate foe light as a morning cloud, no muscle strained, with unhacked sword and unruffled wings, his bright tunic and shining armor without a rent or stain. Not so with our human champion. He had to bear the bitterness and agony of a long and doubtful struggle, with common weapons and against terrible odds. He came out of it with soiled garments, and with a mortal wound, but without a regret and without a memory of hate."

Charles Sumner will always be a foremost figure in our history. His name will be a name to conjure with. Whenever freedom is in peril; whenever justice is menaced, whenever the race, whose right he vindicated, shall be trodden under foot, those lips of stone, from the stately antechamber of the Senate, will again utter their high commands. The noble form of Charles Sumner, to the vision of the lovers of liberty, will seem to take its place again in the front of the battle.

Worcester,

December, 1899.

THE TRUE GRANDEUR OF NATIONS.

An Oration before the Authorities of the City of Boston, July 4, 1845.

Milton, Sonnet to Fairfax.

Pax optima rerum

Quas homini novisse datum est; pax una triumphis

Innumeris potior; pax custodire salutem

Et cives æquare potens.

Silius Italicus, Punica, Lib. XI. vv. 592-595.

---

Sed majoris est gloriæ ipsa bella verbo occidere quam homines ferro, et acquirere vel obtinere pacem pace, non bello.—Augustini Epistola CCLXII., ad Darium Comitem.

---

Certainly, if all who look upon themselves as men, not so much from the shape of their bodies as because they are endowed with reason, would listen awhile unto Christ's wholesome and peaceable decrees, and not, puffed up with arrogance and conceit, rather believe their own opinions than his admonitions, the whole world long ago (turning the use of iron into milder works) should have lived in most quiet tranquillity, and have met together in a firm and indissoluble league of most safe concord.—Arnobius Afer, Adversus Gentes, Lib. I. c. 6.

---

And so for the first time [three hundred years after the Christian era] the meek and peaceful Jesus became a God of Battle, and the cross, the holy sign of Christian redemption, a banner of bloody strife. This irreconcilable incongruity between the symbol of universal peace and the horrors of war, in my judgment, is conclusive against the miraculous or supernatural character of the transaction [the vision of Constantine].—I was agreeably surprised to find that Mosheim concurred in these sentiments, for which I will readily encounter the charge of Quakerism.—Milman, History of Christianity, Book III. chap. 1.

---

When you see fighting, be peaceable; for a peaceable disposition shuts the door of contention. Oppose kindness to perverseness; the sharp sword will not cut soft silk. By using sweet words and gentleness you may lead an elephant with a hair.—Saadi, The Gulistan, translated by Francis Gladwin, Chap. III. Tale 28.

---

Si l'on vous disait que tous les chats d'un grand pays se sont assemblés par milliers dans une plaine, et qu'après avoir miaulé tout leur saoul, ils se sont jetés avec fureur les uns sur les autres, et ont joué ensemble de