t only in the triumphant death of the mob-hunted
martyr, but in the still, lonely, and, by all but God, unseen agony of
the poor and humble Christian, in those numerous cases where persecution
indeed was not, but the sorrowful trial of the neglect and careless
indifference of their fellow-beings, the total absence of all
sympathy--a heavy desolation whether in life or death.

I have just lost a friend, Dr. Follen, a man to whose character no words
of mine could do justice. He has been publicly mourned from more than
one Christian pulpit; and Dr. Channing, in a discourse after his death,
has spoken of him as one whom "many thought the most perfect man they
ever knew." Among those many I was one. I have never seen any one whom I
revered, loved, and admired more than I did Dr. Follen. He perished,
with above a hundred others, in a burning steam-boat, on the Long Island
Sound; at night, and in mid-winter, the freezing waters affording no
chance of escape to the boldest swimmer or the most tenacious clinger to
existence. He perished in the very flower of vigorous manhood, cut off
in the midst of excellent usefulness, separated, _for the first time_,
from a most dearly loved wife and child, who were prevented from
accompanying him by sickness. In a scene of indescribable terror,
confusion, and dismay, that noble and good man closed his life; and all
who have spoken of him have said, "Could one have seen his countenance,
doubtless it was to the last the mirror of his serene and steadfast
spirit;" and for myself, after the first shock of hearing of that awful
calamity, I could only think it mattered not how or where that man met
his death. He was always near to God, and who can doubt that, in that
scene of apparent horror and despair, God was very near to him?

Even so, my dearest Harriet, do I now think of the impending fate of
Dorothy; but oh, the difference between the sudden catastrophe in the
one case, and the foreknowledge granted in the other! Time, whose awful
uses our blind security so habitually forgets, is granted to her, with
its inestimable value marked on it by the finger of death, undimmed by
the busy hands of earthly pursuits and interests; she has, and will
have, her dearest friends and lovers about her to the very end; and I
know of no prayer that I should frame for her, but exemption from acute
pain. For you, my dearest Harriet, if pain and woe and suffering are
appointed you, it is to some good purpose, and