etimes with both hands
full. You must write like a horse in full gallop. And yet you don't seem
to. Those articles in the "Examiner," and the letter in the "Inquirer,"
seem to be thoroughly well considered; the breadth of view in them,
the penetration, the candor and fairness, the sound judgment, please me
exceedingly. Only one thing I questioned; and that is, putting the
plea for universal suffrage on the ground that it is education for the
people. One might ask if it were well to put a ship in the hands of
the crew because it would be a good school for them. And looking at
our popular elections, one, may doubt whether they are a good school.
I should be inclined to say that if the people could consent that only
property holders who could read [286] and write should vote, it would
be better. But they will not consent; we are on the popular tide, and
suffrage must be universal, and the freedmen eventually must and will
have the franchise.

But with the general strain of your writing I agree entirely. What you
say of the exceptional character of the Southern treason is true, and
it has not been so distinctly nor so well said before. I had thought the
same myself, and, of course, you must be right! Yet we must take care
lest the concession go too far. Treason must forever be branded as the
greatest of crimes. It aims not to murder a man, but a people. And as
to opinion and conscience, I suppose all traitors have an opinion and a
conscience.

I have read this time the whole of the "Examiner," which I seldom do.
It is all very good and satisfactory. Osgood's article on Robertson is
excellent; it appreciates him and his time. One laments that his mind
had so hard a lot; but every real man must, in one way or another, fight
a great battle. . . . Especially I feel indebted to Abbot's article.
Truly he 'says, that the great question of the coming days is,--theism,
or atheism? Not whether Jesus is our Master, the chief among men,
but whether the God in whom Jesus believed really exists; and, by
consequence, whether the immortality which lay open to his vision is but
a dream of weary and burdened humanity? Herbert Spencer believes in no
such God and Father, and his religion, which he vaunts so much, is but
a hard and cold abstraction. On other subjects he is a great writer; and
in his volume of essays there is not one which is not marked with strong
and original thought. It is a prodigious intellect, certainly, and
struggling h