15 



fierce flare of his flesh consuming faggots and 

 rusted for aye the levers of his muscle-rend- 

 ing racks ; how it has raised the poor, the low- 

 ly and the ignorant and brought the rich, the 

 high born and the learned down to a more 

 common and less caste marked plane. 



It has also insensibly, yet surely, softened 

 the rigor of a host of heart breaking evils that 

 ignorant men bore patiently, apathetically or 

 helplessly in the long, dark, dreary times 

 agone, simply because they knew no better, 

 or adventured to breathe no murmur, or dared 

 not rub the talismanic ring of Change — until 

 Education with her Muses of Poetry and 

 Prose ; her Commerce and Travel ; her Print- 

 ing Press and Schools ; her Gunpowder and 

 her Agnostic with his untrammelled Thought, 

 pointed out to them the very place to set the 

 chisel of Emancipation upon the formidable 

 gyves of venerable Tyrant Custom and an- 

 cient High Priest Superstition, and told them 

 when to drive the keen edge through a rusty 

 link with the Thor hammer of Progress wield- 

 ed by the lusty arms of the Thinker of Free 

 Thought. Alas ! that even in this, the freest 

 and fairest of all the countries on the Globe, 

 the needed work should as yet have been so 



