maturer years is radically different from that which inspired them as neophytes. But after this range of speculation and this latitude of doubt, Garfield came back always with freshness and delight 5 to the simpler instincts of religious faith, which, earliest implanted, longest survive. Not many weeks before his assassination, walking on the banks of the Potomac with a friend, and conversing on those topics of personal religion, concerning which noble natures have an unconquerable reserve, he 10 said that he found the Lord's Prayer and the simple petitions learned in infancy infinitely restful to him, not merely in their stated repetition, but in their casual and frequent recall as he went about the daily duties of life. Certain texts of Scriptures had a very strong hold on his memory and his 15 heart. He heard, while in Edinburgh some years ago, an eminent Scotch preacher who prefaced his sermon with reading the eighth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, which book had been the subject of careful study with Garfield during all his religious life. He was greatly impressed 20 by the elocution of the preacher, and declared that it had imparted a new and deeper meaning to the majestic utterances of Saint Paul. He referred often in after years to that memorable service, and dwelt with exaltation of feeling upon the radiant promise and the assured hope with which 25 the great apostle of the Gentiles was "persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." 30 The crowning characteristic of General Garfield's religious opinions, as, indeed, of all his opinions, was his liberality. In all things he had charity. Tolerance was of his nature. He respected in others the qualities which he possessed himself sincerity of conviction and frankness of expression. 35 With him the inquiry was not so much what a man believes, but does he believe it? The lines of his friendship and his On the morning of Saturday, July 2, the President was a contented and happy man-not in an ordinary degree, but joyfully, almost boyishly happy. On his way to the railroad station, to which he drove slowly, in conscious enjoyment of the beautiful morning, with an unwonted sense of leisure and ic a keen anticipation of pleasure, his talk was all in the grateful and gratulatory vein. He felt that after four months of trial his administration was strong in its grasp of affairs, strong in popular favor and destined to grow stronger; that grave difficulties confronting him at his inauguration had 15. been safely passed; that trouble lay behind him and not before him; that he was soon to meet the wife whom he loved, now recovering from an illness which had but lately disquieted and at times almost unnerved him; that he was going to his Alma Mater to renew the most cherished asso- 20 ciations of his young manhood, and to exchange greetings with those whose deepening interest had followed every step of his upward progress from the day he entered upon his college course until he had attained the loftiest elevation in the gift of his countrymen. 25 Surely if happiness can ever come from the honors or triumphs of this world, on that quiet July morning James A. Garfield may well have been a happy man. No foreboding of evil haunted him; no slightest premonition of danger Artorial Struclouded his sky. His terrible fate was upon him in an in- 30 stant. One moment he stood erect, strong, confident in the years stretching peacefully out before him. The next he lay wounded, bleeding, helpless, doomed to weary weeks of torture, to silence, and the grave. tion, Transition confidence encircled men of every creed, and men of no creed, and to the end of his life, on his ever-lengthening list of friends, were to be found the names of a pious Catholic priest and of an honest-minded and generous-hearted freethinker. ransition For no 35 Great in life, he was surpassingly great in death. cause, in the very frenzy of wantonness and wickedness, by 5 the red hand of murder, he was thrust from the full tide of this world's interest, from its hopes, its aspirations, its victories, into the visible presence of death—and he did not quail. Not alone for the one short moment in which, stunned and dazed, he could give up life, hardly aware of its relinquishment, but through days of deadly languor, through weeks of agony, that was not less agony because silently borne, with clear sight and calm courage, he looked into his open grave. What blight and ruin met his anguished eyes, 10 whose lips may tell what brilliant, broken plans, what baffled, high ambitions, what sundering of strong, warm, manhood's friendships, what bitter rending of sweet household ties! Behind him a proud, expectant nation, a great host of sustaining friends, a cherished and happy mother, 15 wearing the full, rich honors of her early toil and tears; the wife of his youth, whose whole life lay in his; the little boys not yet emerged from childhood's day of frolic; the fair young daughter; the sturdy sons just springing into closest companionship, claiming every day and every day rewarding 20 a father's love and care; and in his heart the eager, rejoicing power to meet all demand. Before him, desolation and great darkness ! And his soul was not shaken. His countrymen were thrilled with instant, profound and universal sympathy. Masterful in his mortal weakness, he became 25 the centre of a nation's love, enshrined in the prayers of a world. But all the love and all the sympathy could not share with him his suffering. With unfaltering front he faced derness he took leave of life. the assassin's bullet he heard the voice of God. simple resignation he bowed to the Divine decree. 30 35 He trod the wine press alone. death. With unfailing tenAbove the demoniac hiss of With As the end drew near, his early craving for the sea returned. The stately mansion of power had been to him the wearisome hospital of pain, and he begged to be taken from its prison walls, from its oppressive, stifling air, from its homelessness and its hopelessness. Gently, silently, the love of a great people bore the pale sufferer to the longed-for Lusion. III. WENDELL PHILLIPS. Toussaint l'Ouverture.1 A lecture delivered in New York and Boston in December, 1861. LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: I have been requested to offer 15 you a sketch made some years since, of one of the most remarkable men of the last generation, — the great St. Domingo chief, Toussaint l'Ouverture, an unmixed negro, with no drop of white blood in his veins. My sketch is at once a biography and an argument, a biography, of course very 20 brief, of a negro soldier and statesman, which I offer you as an argument in behalf of the race from which he sprung. I am about to compare and weigh races; indeed I am engaged to-night in what you will think the absurd effort to convince you that the negro race, instead of being that object of pity 25 1 Reprinted by permission of Lee & Shepard from Speeches, Lectures and Letters, Wendell Phillips, First Series. 5 or contempt which we usually consider it, is entitled, judged by the facts of history, to a place close by the side of the Saxon. Now races love to be judged in two ways—by the great men they produce and by the average merit of the mass of the race. We Saxons are proud of Bacon, Shakespeare, Hampden, Washington, Franklin, the stars we have lent to the galaxy of history; and then we turn with equal pride to the average merit of Saxon blood, since it streamed from its German home. So, again, there are three tests by 10 which races love to be tried. The first, the basis of all, is courage, the element which says, here and to-day, "This continent is mine, from the Lakes to the Gulf: let him beware who seeks to divide it!" [Cheers.] And the second is the recognition that force is doubled by purpose; liberty 15 regulated by law is the secret of Saxon progress. And the third element is persistency, endurance; first a purpose, then death or success. Of these three elements is made that Saxon pluck which has placed our race in the van of modern civilization. 20 In the hour you lend me to-night, I attempt the Quixotic effort to convince you that the negro blood, instead of standing at the bottom of the list, is entitled, if judged either by its great men or its masses, either by its courage, its purpose, or its endurance, to a place as near ours as any other blood 25 known in history. And, for the purpose of my argument, I take an island, St. Domingo, about the size of South Carolina, the third spot in America upon which Columbus placed his foot. Charmed by the magnificence of its scenery and fertility of its soil, he gave it the fondest of all names, His30 paniola, Little Spain. His successor, more pious, rebaptized it from St. Dominic, St. Domingo; and when the blacks, in 1803, drove our white blood from its surface, they drove our names with us, and began the year 1804 under the old name, Hayti, the land of mountains. It was originally tenanted by 35 filibusters, French and Spanish, of the early commercial epochs, the pirates of that day as of ours. The Spanish took |