A judge of the
superior-court sat on the front bench clapping his hands with a noise
like pistol shots.
This served him as a preparation for the Brooklyn address already
referred to, which, if it had been equal throughout, might be classed
among the world's great speeches, and it is certainly one of the most
brilliant orations of either ancient or modern times. Certain passages
in it remind one of a shower of falling stars. It is remarkable for its
light and shade. He began with a gay and graceful compliment to Thomas
Corwin, an old statesman of the Henry Clay school, who was seated on the
platform; but he soon became intensely serious. "The lesson of the hour
is insurrection. And why is it? Because we are all recreant Americans;
recreant to the principles of our ancestors." After a while he changed
to a sort of rippling humor, which was peculiar to him, and delighted
his audience immensely, describing the subterfuges which had come into
fashion to escape using the word slavery. "Hypocrisy is the homage that
vice pays to virtue." Then he became deeply pathetic as he referred to
the heroic man condemned to death and lying wounded in a Virginia
prison; and concluded with an outburst of spiritual triumph like that in
Goethe's tragedy of Egmont. "They have brave men in Virginia: it was not
an old, grey-headed man entering Harper's Ferry that they were afraid
of, it was the John Brown in every man's own conscience that made them
tremble.
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