olitical and religious continued to flourish. They may
have contributed though, insensibly, to a public opinion that became
formidable in the end but the effect was not as perceptible as was
the effect of Garrison's legend that slavery was a covenant with hell
and a league with death, which had its place at the head of the
_Liberator_ through successive years. Nor do I believe that "it
revolutionized the tone of Northern society." Indeed, there is a
"tone" of Northern society that has not been revolutionized to this
day. The South is still the land of gentle birth. The slave-holder
still lives as a man of breeding and the owner of estates. The negro
is still of an inferior caste and in some circles the days of slavery
were the great days of the Republic. When the "Biglow Papers" appeared
Mr. Lowell had not achieved distinction. Society did not know him to
follow him. It cared nothing for what he thought, and it was only
amused by what he said. The Lowell of 1840 was not the Lowell of 1890.
Nor can any series of statements be more untruthful and absurd than
the statements of the writer that "thenceforth it became creditable to
advocate abolition in drawing rooms, and to preach it from fashionable
city pulpits to congregations paying fancy prices for their pews. In
the workshops, the barrooms and other popular resorts the laugh was
turned against the slave-owners; the ground was prepared for the popular
enthusiasm which recruited the armies that exhausted the South, and
Lowell must share with Lincoln and Grant the glory of the crowning
victories."

If any work of romance contains more fiction in the same space, it is
my fortune not to have seen that work. The circulation of the _Boston
Courier_ in which the papers were printed was very limited. It did not
go into barrooms nor into workshops. It was read chiefly by the
converted and semi-converted abolitionists. As to fashionable pulpits
thenceforth preaching abolition it is to be said that there was only
one leading pulpit, Theodore Parker's pulpit, in which abolitionism was
tolerated until years after the appearance of the "Biglow Papers." As
to society, it is to be said that in the Fifties Charles Sumner, a
Senator, was ostracized for his opinions upon slavery.

It is nearer the truth to say that what passes for society in New
England never tolerated abolitionists nor encouraged abolitionism.

The one writing which in an historical point of view contri