se, all those principles of justice and right and
liberty, which had dimly brooded over the dreams of his youth, seeking
definite forms and verbal expression. It must have been an electric
flashing of thought, and a knitting of soul, granted to but few in this
life, and will be a life-long memory to those who participated in it. In
the society, moreover, of Wendell Phillips, Edmund Quincy, William
Lloyd Garrison, and other men of earnest faith and refined culture, Mr.
Douglass enjoyed the high advantage of their assistance and counsel in
the labor of self-culture, to which he now addressed himself with wonted
energy. Yet, these gentlemen, although proud of Frederick Douglass,
failed to fathom, and bring out to the light of day, the highest
qualities of his mind; the force of their own education stood in
their own way: they did not delve into the mind of a colored man for
capacities which the pride of race led them to believe to be restricted
to their own Saxon blood. Bitter and vindictive sarcasm, irresistible
mimicry, and a pathetic narrative of his own experiences of slavery,
were the intellectual manifestations which they encouraged him to
exhibit on the platform or in the lecture desk.

A visit to England, in 1845, threw Mr. Douglass among men and women of
earnest souls and high culture, and who, moreover, had never drank of
the bitter waters of American caste. For the first time in his life, he
breathed an atmosphere congenial to the longings of his spirit, and felt
his manhood free and{11} unrestricted. The cordial and manly greetings
of the British and Irish audiences in public, and the refinement and
elegance of the social circles in which he mingled, not only as an
equal, but as a recognized man of genius, were, doubtless, genial and
pleasant resting places in his hitherto thorny and troubled journey
through life. There are joys on the earth, and, to the wayfaring
fugitive from American slavery or American caste, this is one of them.

But his sojourn in England was more than a joy to Mr. Douglass. Like
the platform at Nantucket, it awakened him to the consciousness of new
powers that lay in him. From the pupilage of Garrisonism he rose to the
dignity of a teacher and a thinker; his opinions on the broader aspects
of the great American question were earnestly and incessantly sought,
from various points of view, and he must, perforce, bestir himself to
give suitable answer. With that prompt and truthful perceptio