great interest in society ought to have a voice and a
decisive testimony. Art should be in sympathy with freedom and
literature, and all human learning should speak with _unmistakable_
accents for the elevation, evangelization, and liberation of the
oppressed. In a future day, the historian cannot purge our political
history from the shame of wanton and mercenary oppression. But there
is not, I believe, a book in the literature of our country that will
be alive and known a hundred years hence, in which can be found the
taint of despotism. The literature of the world is on the side of
liberty.

I am very truly yours,

[Illustration: (signature) Henry Ward Beecher]

[Illustration: H. B. Stowe (Engraved by J. C. Buttre)]

[Illustration: PLAYFORD HALL, SUFFOLK. The seat of Thomas Clarkson,
Esq.]

A Day spent at Playford Hall.

It was a pleasant morning in May,--I believe that is the orthodox way
of beginning a story,--when C. and I took the cars to go into the
country to Playford Hall. "And what's Playford Hall?" you say. "And
why did you go to see it?" As to what it is, here is a reasonably good
picture before you. As to why, it was for many years the residence of
Thomas Clarkson, and is now the residence of his venerable widow and
her family.

Playford Hall is considered, I think, the oldest of the fortified
houses in England, and is, I am told, the only one that has water in
the moat. The water which is seen girdling the wall in the picture, is
the moat; it surrounds the place entirely, leaving no access except
across the bridge, which is here represented.

After crossing this bridge, you come into a green court-yard, filled
with choice plants and flowering shrubs, and carpeted with that thick,
soft, velvet-like grass, which is to be found nowhere else in so
perfect a state as in England.

The water is fed by a perpetual spring, whose current is so sluggish
as scarcely to be perceptible, but which yet has the vitality of a
running stream.

It has a dark and glassy stillness of surface, only broken by the
forms of the water plants, whose leaves float thickly over it.

The walls of the moat are green with ancient moss, and from the
crevices springs an abundant flowering vine, whose delicate leaves and
bright yellow flowers in some places entirely mantled the stones with
their graceful drapery.

The picture I have given you represents only one side of the moat. The
othe