red were performed _on foot!_ during which
time he has held nearly fifty public meetings. Rivers and mountains
vanish in his path; midnight finds him wending his solitary way over an
unfrequented road; the sun is anticipated in his rising. Never was moral
sublimity of character better illustrated." Such was the marvelous man,
whose visit to Boston, in the month of March, of the year 1828, dates
the beginning of a new epoch in the history of America. The event of
that year was not the "Bill of Abominations," great as was the national
excitement which it produced; nor was it yet the then impending
political struggle between Jackson and Adams, but the unnoticed meeting
of Lundy and Garrison. Great historic movements are born not in the
whirlwinds, the earthquakes, and the pomps of human splendor and power,
but in the agonies and enthusiasms of grand, heroic spirits. Up to this
time Garrison had had, as the religious revivalist would say, no
"realizing sense" of the enormity of slave-holding. Occasionally an
utterance had dropped from his pen which indicated that his heart was
right on the subject, but which evinced no more than the ordinary
opposition to its existence, nor any profound convictions as to his own
or the nation's duty in regard to its extinction. His first reference to
the question appeared in connection with a notice made by him in the
_Free Press_ of a spirited poem, entitled "Africa," in which the
authoress sings of:

"The wild and mingling groans of writhing millions,
Calling for vengeance on my guilty land."

He commended the verses "to all those who wish to cherish female genius,
and whose best feelings are enlisted in the cause of the poor oppressed
sons of Africa." He was evidently impressed, but the impression belonged
to the ordinary, transitory sort. His next recorded utterance on the
subject was also in the _Free Press_. It was made in relation with some
just and admirable strictures on the regulation Fourth of July oration,
with its "ceaseless apostrophes to liberty, and fierce denunciations of
tyranny." Such a tone was false and mischievous--the occasion was for
other and graver matter. "There is one theme," he declares, "which
should be dwelt upon, till our whole country is free from the curse--it
is slavery." The emphasis and energy of the rebuke and exhortation lifts
this second allusion to slavery, quite outside of merely ordinary
occurrences. It was not an ordinary personal occurrenc