If the people wanted him, they could make their wishes known. He did not wish to go to Congress as a self-elected member.

Would that there was more of this high sense of propriety among our public men. Would that a public sentiment might be awakened which should demand that our rulers be not self-chosen, but chosen by the people. Would that this sentiment were so strong that any effort on the part of a candidate to secure his nomination or election, must work his inevitable defeat. No man is worthy of positions of public trust who plans, and barters, and schemes to secure them. If he is to be an efficient public servant, he has no time to spend in securing his own election. It will require all his time, it will tax his best energies to fit himself for the duties which high office imposes. Let him inform his mind, and culture his heart, and develope to the utmost his manhood. Let him make himself worthy of the confidence of his countrymen, make his services indispensible to their best interests, and then wait modestly until they call him. If we are to share the respect of other nations, if our Government is to live and work out a worthy destiny, we must have reform in this regard, and it cannot come too soon. The most dangerous class among us are the men who trade in the political affairs of the country.

After months of patient waiting for an expression of the people's will, Mr. Sumner was elected to the Senate by a bare majority. He assumed his duties in the Congress of the Nation, and discharged them with such fidelity that when the time for a re-election came round, he was returned to Washington, almost by acclamation.

His political life began at the darkest and most critical period of our history. Slavery had strengthened and fattened within its prescribed limits, until it had determined to overleap all barriers, and cover and control the continent.

One of the schemes for slavery extension was a rigid law for the rendition of fugitives. Another was the repeal of all laws excluding slavery from the Territories. Against both these measures the learning, eloquence and influence of our young Senator were

brought to bear. His first important speech in Congress, which came as soon as the proprieties of the situation would warrant, though the time seemed long to his hopeful and yet anxious friends at home,—was in opposition to the "Fugitive Slave Law." By invincible logic it maintained that “Congress had no power under the Constitution to legislate for the rendition of fugitive slaves, and that the act was in utter conflict . with the genius of our Government." It also laid down the formula, which subsequently became the rallying cry of the "Free Soil Party," that "Slavery was sectional, while Freedom was national." This was followed by an even more convincing speech on "The Crime against Kansas." It stripped bare, in such an unsparing way, the schemes of the slave propagandists and their direful results, that two days later Mr. Sumner was the victim of a murderous assault by Preston S. Brooks of South Carolina. This was the first blood of emancipation. It was here that the arbitrament of arms began, which ended with the sweeping of the "Barbarism of Slavery" from this continent forever. A fire was kindled when our Senator was struck down, which burned and consumed, until the fetters fell from the limbs of every slave. Injured and enfeebled for life, Mr. Sumner returned to his place in the Senate, and led on in the "good fight." With a courage that nothing could intimidate, an energy that nothing could withstand, he dealt blow after blow upon the head of slavery. The will that could strike out into the eddies, currents and treacherous under-currents of Niagara, and swim the river, became now a controlling power amid the counter currents of political strife.

"His successive speeches, by their very titles, gave a series of phrases that were half battles. Grattan said that all the speeches of Demosthenes were not equal to that brief utterance of Chatham: 'America has resisted; I rejoice, my lords!' Sumner's phrases had less electricity than this; but they had a weighty and organizing value. 'Freedom National, Slavery Sectional.' 'The Crime against Kansas.' 'The Barbarism of Slavery.' Each of of these hit some nail precisely on the

weal, too seldom seen in this selfish world. Some one will say, “It does not sufficiently indicate love and trust in God." We answer, it reveals an abiding love for man, the surest evidence of love toward God.

In the death of Sumner we have lost the only man in Congress who filled our ideal of a statesman. Politicians are numerous. Genuine statesmen are too few. He was guided by high principles in every public act of his life. He had a single eye to the honor and welfare of his country. He was above all the personal and partizan schemes which so often disgrace our public men. The Government, in his sight, was not a prize for which men might strive, but a sacred trust, to be guarded, preserved, and transmitted to the coming generations. When he spoke, whether we accepted his opinions or not, we always knew that he expressed the deepest convictions of his soul. In reading the Congressional debates, when one passed from the narrow personal or partizan pleadings of a majority of our Senators and Representatives, to the briefest address of Charles Sumner, it was like passing from the stifled air of a dungeon to the free breathing room of the open heavens. Every sentence was so chaste, so high-toned, so unselfish, so evidently dictated by love of country, and a desire to build her up in all that exalts a nation and honors and blesses man, that one felt strengthened and refreshed by every breath that came from the mountain-top of this kingly soul.

Mr. Sumner was conspicuously an idealist. He believed in and followed the truth, first and last and always. He knew no such words as policy or expediency. "His confidence in the ultimate victory of ideas led him into movements and measures which even rash men thought preposterous. And then he would live on and work on, till his prophecies would be accomplished; and people would be astonished that he was not surprised at his own victories. It may even be said that his conviction that this or that measure would succeed, because it was right, made him intolerant of those people who saw the difficulties in the way. If he saw them he did not care for them, and did not take count of them." During the Sena

torial contest his election trembled in the balance. It seemed as if his radical notions on the slavery question must defeat his election. His friends in and out of the Legislature were filled with anxiety. If he would but modify some of his anti-slavery doctrines, all would be well. A delegation was sent to urge upon him the necessity of such a course. After a long interview they returned and reported simply this: "Mr. Sumner believes in anti-slavery." Yes, he believed; and they could swerve the earth from its orbit, as easily as Sumner from the line of his convictions.

"The difficulty with Mr. Sumner as a statesman," said Mr. Prescott, many years ago, "is that he aims at the greatest abstract good, instead of the greatest practicable good." Ah, Mr. Prescott, history will write that tendency as his crowning glory! "The fact that most of the great principles for which he battled, triumphed, even in his day, is a new proof that the right is always expedient. In the last acaccount nothing else pays, nothing else stands."

It would hardly be safe, we think, to rank Mr. Sumner in the first class of original minds. He estimated himself rightly when he said, "People forget that I am a cistern, not a fountain, and that I must have time to fill." His mission was to cullect, collate and apply truth, rather than to discover truth. But in this he was unequalled among Americans. If he was a "cistern," he was the most capacious cistern the world ever saw. There scarcely seemed a limit to his knowledge. Well informed men were amazed at the floods of light which he poured upon every subject that elicited his attention. His lectures and addresses consisted of "long chains of rhetoric, of accumulated facts, of erudite illustrations, that might have been cumbrous and tedious if they had not been sustained by a vigor such as his." Though his style was too ornate to meet the taste of the present time, yet it was well-nigh faultless of its kind. Webster's periods are more stately; Everett's are more mellifluous; Phillips' are more terse and aptly turned; but Sumner's orations will outlive them For breadth of knowledge, fertility of

all.

illustration, and unshrinking devotion to a great principle, they stand pre-eminent in literature. His works will be the educator of the coming generation. School boys will declaim paragraphs, and gray-haired men will read pages of his addresses, when the names of most of his contemporaries are forgotten.

Strange as it may seem, this cultured, loyal, faithful, unselfish, almost peerless man and statesman, was never popular. He had many warm and devoted friends. He had many cruel and bitter enemies. He was as profoundly revered and truly honored as any man in America. He was as intensely hated. This hatred is easily explained. In the first place he lacked that peculiar magnetism that wins and holds men. But more than this, he never compromised with men. He never became the tool of a clique or a party. His strong will stood in the way of selfish schemes.. His spotless life was a constant rebuke to all corruption. So long as sin and selfishness are in the world, the man who will not conciliate the wrong, must confront enemies. "Wo unto you when all men speak well of you." "Blessed are ye when men shall revile you, and shall persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake; rejoice and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven. For so persecuted they the prophets which were before you." The time will come when men like Sumner will be universally revered and honored. When that time comes, we shall be on the border lands of the millennium.

It has been charged to the discredit of Mr. Sumner, that he was of cold, imperious, aristocratic disposition. There was doubtless a forbidding side to his nature. But it had its genial side as well. Those who knew him the most intimately, loved him the most tenderly. It is said that "to sit with him for an hour in his library, with the doors closed against the world, was to love him ever afterwards." No home of all our "Delegation in Congress" was more freely opened, or more constantly frequented by visitors at Washington. In none were they received with heartier welcome, if they came on any manly errand. If they

brought some axe to grind," at the expense of the Government, and expected. him to turn the crank, they were dismissed without much ceremony. It was doubtless thus that he gained the reputation of imperiousness and aristocracy. Every act of his public life is a rebuke to such imputation. If a wise, rich, cultured, influential man, whose company is sought by the scholars and statesmen, the wealth and the fashion of all lands, is willing to put the blandishments of society behind him, and make common cause with the poor, the weak, the down-trodden, and endure for their sake a more laborious life than any galley slave, then were it a blessing to humanity if all men were born aristocrats.

The religious convictions of our lamented Senator may be expressed in this beautiful paragraph, taken from his oration on Prog

ress:

"There shall come a nobler triumph than any over inanimate nature. Man himself shall be subdued: subdued to abhorrence of vice, of injustice, of violence; subdued to all the requirements of duty and religion; subdued according to the Law of Human Progress, to the recognition of that Gospel Law, -by the side of which the first is as the scaffolding upon the sacred temple, -the Law of Human Brotherhood.

"To labor for this end was man sent into the world; not in the listlessness of idle perfections, but endowed with infinite capacities, inspired by infinite desires, and commanded to strive perpetually after excellence, amid the encouragements of hope, the promises of final success, and the inexpressible delights which spring from its pursuits. Thus does the Law of Human Progress

mistakes in legislation sometimes. He exhibited infirmity of temper sometimes. But history will give him one of the fairest niches in the temple of fame. In knowledge, culture, eloquence, integrity, fidelity, purity, persistent purpose, perseverance, all blended in one character, he has scarcely a peer in history.

Now that he is gone, his great worth is recognized. It is a credit to our people, notwithstanding their faults and self-seeking, that with such spontaneity of spirit they rise up to honor his memory. All past animosity is forgotten now. His faults are buried deeper than his grave. His virtues will be held in perpetual remembrance. Few men have lived and died who were more truly mourned.

If the sudden decease of our great Senator shall lead our people to emulate his virtues, then shall it come to pass, that, like Samson of old, he will "slay more (evil) by his death than in his life." This is the lesson which our national bereavement teaches us. He is gone. His voice, so eloquent in appeal, and so wise in counsel, will inspire and instruct us no more. But the principles, to whose interests he devoted his life, are with us still. The

cause of God and humanity is yet a vital question. The country he loved and served has yet her work to do, and her place to hold among the nations. The voice that comes to us out of that new grave, especially to the young men of America, says "Arouse ye! Put all frivolity, indifference and selfishness out of your hearts! Cultivate your best powers, and consecrate those powers to truth and God!" The country needs you. The world cries mightily for your assistance. The great and the good are passing away. A little while ago we followed Agassiz to his rest. Now we plant the spring blossoms on Sumner's grave. Who will rise up and fill their places? Who will carry forward the work which dropped unfinished from their hands? The young men of our time, if it is done at all. To do this, will tax the best energies of body and soul. But though all may not be wise and great as Sumner was, all can cultivate and practice Sumner's virtues. If all will do this, in the measure of their ability, liberty is secure, the Government is secure, and law, order, justice, mercy, truth and righteousness will be the glory of the earth.

A. J. Patterson.

C. M. Sawyer.