called the Cabinet together to hear it, and it was published on the following Monday."

HYMN AFTER THE EMANCIPATION PROC

LAMATION.

Giver of all that crowns our days,

With Grateful hearts we sing thy praise;
Through deep and desert led by thee,

Our promised land at last we see.

Ruler of nations, judge our cause!
If we have kept thy holy laws,
The sons of Belial curse in vain
The day that rends the captive's chain.

Thou God of vengeance! Israel's Lord!
Break in their grasp the shield and sword,
And make thy righteous judgments known
Till all thy foes are overthrown!

Then, Father, lay thy healing hand
In mercy on our stricken land;
Lead all its wanderers to the fold,
And be their Shepherd as of old.

So shall one Nation's song ascend
To Thee, our Ruler, Father, Friend,
While Heaven's wide arch resounds again
With Peace on earth, good will to men!

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.

THE DEATH OF SLAVERY.

O thou, great Wrong, that, through the slow-paced

years,

Didst hold thy millions fettered, and didst wield

The scourge that drove the laborer to the field,
And turn a stony gaze on human tears,
Thy cruel reign is o'er;

Thy bondmen crouch no more

In terror at the menace of thine eye;
For He who marks the bounds of guilty power,
Long-suffering, hath heard the captive's cry,
And touched his shackles at the appointed hour,
And lo! they fall, and he whose limbs they galled
Stands in his native manhood, disenthralled.

A shout of joy from the redeemed is sent;
Ten thousand hamlets swell the hymn of thanks;
Our rivers roll exulting, and their banks
Send up hosannas to the firmament!

Fields where the bondman's toil

No more shall trench the soil,

Seem now to bask in a serener day;

The meadow-birds sing sweeter, and the airs
Of Heaven with more caressing softness play,
Welcoming man to liberty like theirs.

A glory clothes the land from sea to sea,
For the great land and all its coasts are free.
Copyrighted, 1883, by D. Appleton & Co.

Within that land wert thou enthroned of late, And they by whom the nation's laws were made, And they who filled its judgment seats obeyed Thy mandate, rigid as the will of Fate

Fierce men at thy right hand,

With gesture of command,

Gave forth the word that none might dare gainsay; And grave and reverend ones, who loved thee not, Shrank from thy presence, and in blank dismay Choked down, unuttered, the rebellious thought; While meaner cowards, mingling with thy train, Proved, from the book of God, thy right to reign.

Great as thou wert, and feared from shore to shore,
The wrath of Heaven o'ertook thee in thy pride;
Thou sit'st a ghastly shadow; by thy side
Thy once strong arms hang nerveless evermore.
And they who quailed but now

Before thy lowering brow

Devote thy memory to scorn and shame,

And scoff at the pale, powerless thing thou art.
And they who ruled in thine imperial name,
Subdued, and standing sullenly apart,
Scowl at the hands that overthrew thy reign,
And shattered at a blow the prisoner's chain.

Well was thy doom deserved; thou didst not spare Life's tenderest ties, but cruelly didst part

Husband and wife, and from the mother's heart

Didst wrest her children, deaf to shriek and prayer; Thy inner lair became

The haunt of guilty shame;

Thy lash dropped blood; the murderer, at thy side, Showed his red hands, nor feared the vengeance due. Thou didst sow earth with crimes, and, far and wide, A harvest of uncounted miseries grew,

Until the measure of thy sins at last

Was full, and then the avenging bolt was cast!

Go now, accursed of God, and take thy place
With hateful memories of the elder time,

With many a wasting plague, and nameless crime,
And bloody war that thinned the human race;
With the Black Death,* whose way

Through wailing cities lay,

Worship of Moloch, tyrannies that built
The Pyramids, and cruel creeds that taught
To avenge a fancied guilt by deeper guilt-
Death at the stake to those that held them not.
Lo! the foul phantoms, silent in the gloom
Of the flown ages, part to yield thee room.

I see the better years that hasten by
Carry thee back into that shadowy past,
Where, in the dusty spaces, void and vast,

The

graves of those whom thou hast murdered lie.
The slave-pen, through whose door

Thy victims pass no more,

*A pestilence which swept over the Old World (1347-1350).

Is there, and there shall the grim block remain
At which the slave was sold; while at thy feet
Scourges and engines of restraint and pain
Moulder and rust by thine eternal seat.

There, mid the symbols that proclaim thy crimes,
Dwell thou, a warning to the coming times.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

LINCOLN'S LETTERS.

But Lincoln repelled no one whom he believed to speak to him in good faith and with patriotic purpose. No good advice would go unheeded. No candid criticism would offend him. No honest opposition, while it might pain him, would produce a lasting alienation of feeling between him and the opponent. It may truly be said that few men in power have ever been exposed to more daring attempts to direct their course, to severer censure of their acts, and to more cruel misrepresentation of their motives. And all this he met with that good-natured humor peculiarly his own, and with untiring effort to see the right and to impress it upon those who differed from him. The conversations he had and the correspondence he carried on upon matters of public interest, not only with men in official position, but with private citizens, were almost unceasing, and in a large number of public letters, written ostensibly to meetings, or committees, or persons of importance, he addressed himself directly to the popular mind. Most of these