ponding re-action, which
made those stern old zealots give to others many of the inalienable
rights of liberty denied to themselves, you and I could not to-night
perhaps be allowed to meet face to face, without fear, to discuss
metaphysical and social questions in their broadest aspects, without
the civil or theological powers intervening to close our mouths.

"Fragile in health and frame; of the purest habits in morals; full of
devoted generosity and universal kindness; glowing with ardor to attain
wisdom; resolved at every personal sacrifice to do right; burning with a
desire for affection and sympathy," a boy-under-graduate of Oxford,
described as of tall, delicate, and fragile figure, with large and
lively eyes, with expressive, beautiful and feminine features, with head
covered with long, brown hair, of gracefulness and simplicity of manner,
the heir to a title and the representation of one of the most ancient
English families, which numbered Sir Philip Sidney on its roll of
illustrious names, just sixty-four years ago, and in this nineteenth
century, for no licentiousness, violence, or dishonor, but, for his
refusal to criminate himself or inculpate friends, was, without trial,
expelled by learned divines from his university for writing an
argumentative thesis, which, if it had been the work of some Greek
philosopher, would have been hailed by his judges as a fine specimen of
profound analytical abstruseness--for that expulsion are we the debtors
to theological charity and tolerance for "Queen Mab."

Excommunicated by a mercenary and abject priesthood, cast off by a
savage father, the admirer of that gloomy theology founded by the
murderer of Michael Servetus, and charged by his jealous brother
writers as one of the founders of a Satanic School, for neither
immorality of life nor breach of the parental relation, but for
heterodoxy to an expiring system of dogmatism, and for acting on and
asserting the right of man to think and judge for himself, a father
was to have two children torn from him, in the sacred name of law and
justice, by the principal adviser of a dying madman, "Defender of the
Faith, by Law Established," and by us despised as the self-willed
tyrant, who lost America and poured out human blood like water to
gratify his lust of power. By that Lord Chancellor whose cold,
impassive statue has a place in Westminster Abbey, where Byron's was
refused admittance, and whose memory, when that stone has crumb