who judged the
mightiest cause in which a country was ever plaintiff, a tyrant
criminal, and a world witness!" While Wolfe was yet speaking his
countenance, so naturally harsh, took a yet sterner aspect, and the
artist, by a happy touch, succeeded in transferring it to the canvas.

"But, after all," continued Wolfe, "it shames me to lend aid to an art
frivolous in itself, and almost culpable in times when Freedom wants the
head to design, and perhaps the hand to execute, far other and nobler
works than the blazoning of her past deeds upon perishable canvas."

A momentary anger at the slight put upon his art crossed the pale brow
of the artist; but he remembered the character of the man and continued
his work in silence. "You consider then, sir, that these are times in
which liberty is attacked?" said Clarence.

"Attacked!" repeated Wolfe,--"attacked!" and then suddenly sinking his
voice into a sort of sneer, "why, since the event which this painting
is designed to commemorate, I know not if we have ever had one solitary
gleam of liberty break along the great chaos of jarring prejudice and
barbarous law which we term forsooth a glorious constitution. Liberty
attacked! no, boy; but it is a time when liberty may be gained."

Perfectly unacquainted with the excited politics of the day, or the
growing and mighty spirit which then stirred through the minds of men,
Clarence remained silent; but his evident attention flattered the fierce
republican, and he proceeded.

"Ay," he said slowly, and as if drinking in a deep and stern joy from
his conviction in the truth of the words he uttered,--"ay, I have
wandered over the face of the earth, and I have warmed my soul at the
fires which lay hidden under its quiet surface; I have been in the city
and the desert,--the herded and banded crimes of the Old World, and the
scattered but bold hearts which are found among the savannahs of the
New; and in either I have beheld that seed sown which, from a mustard
grain, too scanty for a bird's beak, shall grow up to be a shelter and
a home for the whole family of man. I have looked upon the thrones of
kings, and lo, the anointed ones were in purple and festive pomp; and
I looked beneath the thrones, and I saw Want and Hunger, and despairing
Wrath gnawing the foundations away. I have stood in the streets of that
great city where Mirth seems to hold an eternal jubilee, and beheld the
noble riot while the peasant starved; and the priest buil