The popular lecture, in the Northern States of America, has become, in Yankee parlance, "an institution"; and it has attained such prevalence and power that it deserves more attention and more respect from those who assume the control of the motive influences of society than it has hitherto received. It has been the habit of certain literary men, (more particularly of such as do not possess a gift for public speech,) and of certain literary magazines, (managed by persons of delicate habit and weak lungs,) to regard and to treat the popular lecture with a measure of contempt. For the last fifteen years the downfall of what has been popularly denominated "The Lecture System" has been confidently predicted by those who, granting them the wisdom which they assume, should have been so well acquainted with its nature and its adaptation to a permanent popular want as to see that it must live and thrive until something more practicable can be contrived to take its place. If anything more interesting, cheaper, simpler, or more portable can be found than a vigorous man, with a pleasant manner, good voice, and something to say, then the popular lecture will certainly be superseded; but the man who will invent this substitute is at present engaged on a new order of architecture and the problem of perpetual motion, with such prospect of full employment for the present as will give "the lecture system" sufficient time to die gracefully. An institution which can maintain its foothold in the popular regard throughout such a war as has challenged the interest and taxed the energies of this nation during the last three years is one which will not easily die; and the history of the popular lecture proves, that, wherever it has been once established, it retains its place through all changes of social material and all phases of political and religious influence. Circumstances there may be which will bring intermissions in its yearly operations; but no instance can be found of its permanent relinquishment by a community which has once enjoyed its privileges, and acquired a taste for the food and inspiration which it furnishes.

An exposition of the character of the popular lecture, the machinery by which it is supported, and the results which it aims at and accomplishes, cannot be without interest to thoughtful readers.

What is the popular lecture in America? It will not help us in this inquest to refer to a dictionary; for it is not necessary that the performance which Americans call a lecture should be an instructive discourse at all. A lecture before the Young Men's Associations and lecture organizations of the country is any characteristic utterance of any man who speaks in their employment. The word "lecture" covers generally generically all the orations, declamations, dissertations, exhortations, recitations, humorous extravaganzas, narratives of travel, harangues, sermons, semi-sermons, demi-semi-sermons, and lectures proper, which can be crowded into what is called "a course," but which might be more properly called a bundle, the bundle depending for its size upon the depth of the managerial purse. Ten or twelve lectures are the usual number, although in some of the larger cities, beginning early in "the lecture season," and ending late, the number given may reach twenty.

The machinery for the management and support of these lectures is as simple as possible, the lecturers themselves having nothing to do with it. There are library associations or lyceum associations, composed principally of young men, in all the cities and large villages, which institute and manage courses of lectures every winter, for the double purpose of interesting and instructing the public and replenishing their treasury. The latter object, it must be confessed, occupies the principal place, although, as it depends for its attainment on the success of the former, the public is as well served as if its entertainment were alone consulted. In the smaller towns there are usually temporary associations, organized for the simple purpose of obtaining lecturers and managing the business incident to a course. Not unfrequently, ten, twenty, or thirty men pledge themselves to make up any deficiency there may be in the funds required for the season's entertainments, and place the management in the hands of a committee. Sometimes two or three persons call themselves a lecture-committee, and employ lecturers, themselves risking the possible loss, and dividing among themselves any profits which their course may produce. The opposition or independent courses in the larger cities are often instituted by such organizations,—sometimes, indeed, by a single person, who has a natural turn for this sort of enterprise. The invitations to lecturers are usually sent out months in advance, though very few courses are definitely provided for and arranged before the first of November. The fees of lecturers range from fifty to a hundred dollars. A few uniformly command the latter sum, and lecture-committees find it for their interest to employ them. It is to be presumed that the universal rise of prices will change these figures somewhat.

The popular lecture is the most purely democratic of all our democratic institutions. The people hear a second time only those who interest them. If a lecturer cannot engage the interest of his audience, his fame or greatness or learning will pass for nothing. A lecture-audience will forgive extravagance, but never dulness. They will give a man one chance to interest them, and if he fails, that is the last of him. The lecture-committees understand this, and gauge the public taste or the public humor as delicately as the most accomplished theatrical manager. The man who receives their invitation may generally be certain that the public wish either to see or hear him. Popularity is the test. Only popularity after trial, or notoriety before, can draw houses. Only popularity and notoriety can pay expenses and swell the balance of profit. Notoriety in the various walks of life and the personal influence of friends and admirers can usually secure a single hearing, but no outside influence can keep a lecturer permanently in the field. If the people "love to hear" him, he can lecture from Maine to California six months in the year; if not, he cannot get so much as a second invitation.

One of the noticeable features of the public humor in this matter is the aversion to professional lecturers,—to those who make lecturing a business, with no higher aim than that of getting a living. No calling or profession can possibly be more legitimate than that of the lecturer; there is nothing immodest or otherwise improper in the advertisement of a man's literary wares; yet it is true, beyond dispute, that the public do not regard with favor those who make lecturing their business, particularly if they present themselves uninvited. So well is this understood by this class of lecturers that a part of their machinery consists of invitations numerously signed, which invitations are written and circulated by themselves, their interested friends, or their authorized agents, and published as their apology for appearing. A man who has no other place in the world than that which he makes for himself on the platform is never a popular favorite, unless he uses the platform for the advocacy of some great philanthropic movement or reform, into which he throws unselfishly the leading efforts of his life. Referring to the history of the last twenty years, it will readily be seen that those who have undertaken to make lecturing a business, without side pursuit or superior aim, are either retired from the field or are very low in the public favor. The public insist, that, in order to be an acceptable lecturer, a man must be something else, that he must begin and remain something else; and it will be found to-day that those only who work worthily in other fields have a permanent hold upon the affections of lecture-going people. It is the public judgment or caprice that the work of the lecturer shall be incidental to some worthy pursuit, from which that work temporarily calls him. There seems to be a kind of coquetry in this. The public do not accept of those who are too openly in the market or who are too easily won. They prefer to entice a man from his chosen love, and account his favors sweeter because the wedded favorite is deprived of them.

A lecturer's first invitation, in consonance with these facts, is almost always suggested by his excellence or notoriety in some department of life that may or may not be allied to the platform. If a man makes a remarkable speech, he is very naturally invited to lecture; but he is no more certain to be invited than he who wins a battle. A showman gets his first invitation for the same reason that an author does,—because he is notorious. Nearly all new men in the lecture-field are introduced through the popular desire to see notorious or famous people. A man whose name is on the popular tongue is a man whom the popular eye desires to see. Such a man will always draw one audience; and a single occasion is all that he is engaged for. After getting a place upon the platform, it is for him to prove his power to hold it. If he does not lecture as well as he writes, or fights, or walks, or lifts, or leaps, or hunts lions, or manages an exhibition, or plays a French horn, or does anything which has made him a desirable man for curious people to see, then he makes way for the next notoriety. Very few courses of lectures are delivered in the cities and larger villages that do not present at least one new man, who is invited simply because people are curious to see him. The popular desire is strong to come in some way into personal contact with those who do remarkable things. They cannot be chased in the street; they can be seen only to a limited extent in the drawing-room; but it is easy to pay twenty-five cents to hear them lecture, with the privilege of looking at them for an hour and criticizing them for a week.

It is a noteworthy fact, in this connection, that, while there are thousands of cultivated men who would esteem it a privilege to lecture for the lecturer's usual fee, there are hardly more than twenty-five in the country whom the public considers it a privilege worth paying for to hear. It is astonishing, that, in a country so fertile as this in the production of gifted and cultivated men, so few find it possible to establish themselves upon the platform as popular favorites. If the accepted ones were in a number of obvious particulars alike, there could be some intelligent generalizing upon the subject; but men possessing fewer points of resemblance, or presenting stronger contrasts, in style of person and performance, than the established favorites of lecture-going people, cannot be found in the world; and if any generalization be attempted, it must relate to matters below the surface and beyond the common apprehension. It is certain that not always the greatest or the most brilliant or the most accomplished men are to be found among the popular lecturers. A man may make a great, even a brilliant speech on an important public question, and be utterly dreary in the lecture-room. There are multitudes of eloquent clergymen who in their pulpits command the attention of immense congregations, yet who meet with no acknowledgment of power upon the platform.

In a survey of those who are the established favorites, it will be found that there are no slaves among them. The people will not accept those who are creed-bound, or those who bow to any authority but God and themselves. They insist that those who address them shall be absolutely free, and that they shall speak only for themselves. Party and sectarian spokesmen find no permanent place upon the platform. It is only when a lecturer cuts loose from all his conventional belongings, and speaks with thought and tongue unfettered, that he finds his way to the popular heart. This freedom has sometimes been considered dangerous by the more conservative members of society; and they have not unfrequently managed to get the lectures into their own hands, or to organize courses representing more moderate views in matters of society, politics, and religion; but their efforts have uniformly proved failures. The people have always refused to support lectures which brought before them the bondmen of creeds and parties. Year after year men have been invited to address audiences three fourths of whom disagreed utterly with the sentiments and opinions which it was well understood such men would present, simply because they were free men, with minds of their own and tongues that would speak those minds or be dumb. Names could be mentioned of those who for the last fifteen years have been established favorites in communities which listened to them respectfully, nay, applauded them warmly, and then abused them for the remainder of the year.

It is not enough, however, that a lecturer be free. He must have something fresh to say, or a fresh and attractive way of saying that which is not altogether new. Individuality, and a certain personal quality which, for lack of a better name, is called magnetism, are also essential to the popular lecturer. People desire to be moved, to be acted upon by a strong and positive nature. They like to be furnished with fresh ideas, or with old ideas put into a fresh and practical form, so that they can be readily apprehended and appropriated.

And here comes the grand difficulty which every lecturer encounters, and over which so many stumble into failure,—that of interesting and refreshing men and women of education and culture, and, at the same time, of pleasing, moving, and instructing those of feebler acquirements or no acquirements at all. Most men of fine powers fail before a popular audience, because they do not fully apprehend the thing to be done. They almost invariably write above the level of one half of their audience, and below the level of the other half. In either event, they fail, and have the mortification of seeing others of inferior gifts succeed through a nicer adaptation of their literary wares to the wants of the market. Much depends upon the choice of a subject. If that be selected from those which touch universal interests and address common motives, half the work is done. A clear, simple, direct style of composition, apt illustration, (and the power of this is marvellous,) and a distinct and pleasant delivery, will do much to complete the success.

It is about equally painful and amusing to witness the efforts which some men make to write down to the supposed capacity of a popular audience. The puerilities and buffooneries that are sometimes undertaken by these men, for the purpose of conciliating the crowd, certainly amuse the crowd, and so answer their end, though not in a way to bring reputation to the actors. No greater mistake can possibly be made than that of regarding an American lecture-going audience with contempt. There is no literary tribunal in this country that can more readily and justly decide whether a man has anything to say, and can say it well, than a lecture-audience in one of the smaller cities and larger villages of the Northern States. It is quite common to suppose that a Western audience demands a lower grade of literary effort, and a rougher style of speech, than an Eastern audience. Indeed, there are those who suppose that a lecture which would fully meet the demands of an average Eastern audience would be beyond the comprehension of an average Western audience; but the lecturer who shall accept any such assumption as this will find himself very unpleasantly mistaken. At the West, the lecture is both popular and fashionable, and the best people attend it. A lecturer may always be certain, then, that the best he can do will be thoroughly appreciated. The West is not particularly tolerant of dull men; but if a man be alive, he will find a market there for the best thought he produces.

In the larger cities of the East, the opera, the play, the frequent concert, the exhibition, the club-house, the social assembly, and a variety of public gatherings and public excitements, take from the lecture-audiences the class that furnishes the best material in the smaller cities; so that a lecturer rarely or never sees his best audiences in New York, or Boston, or Philadelphia.

Another requisite to popularity upon the platform is earnestness. Those who imagine that a permanent hold upon the people can be obtained by amusing them are widely mistaken. The popular lecture has fallen into disrepute with many worthy persons in consequence of the admission of buffoons and triflers to the lecturer's platform; and it is an evil which ought to be remedied. It is an evil, indeed, which is slowly working its own remedy. It is a disgraceful fact, that, in order to draw together crowds of people, men have been admitted to the platform whose notoriety was won by the grossest of literary charlatanism,—men whose only hold upon the public was gained by extravagances of thought and expression which would compromise the dignity and destroy the self-respect of any man of character and common sense. It is not enough that these persons quickly disgust their audiences, and have a brief life upon the list. They ought never to be introduced to the public as lecturers; and any momentary augmentation of receipts that may be secured from the rabble by the patronage of such mountebanks is more than lost by the disgrace they bring and the damage they do to what is called "The Lecture System." It is an insult to any lyceum-audience to suppose that it can have a strong and permanent interest in a trifler; and it is a gross injustice to every respectable lecturer in the field to introduce into his guild men who have no better motive and no higher mission than the stage-clown and the negro-minstrel.

But the career of triflers is always short. Only he who feels that he has something to do in making the world wiser and better, and who, in a bold and manly way, tries persistently to do it, is always welcome; and this fact—an incontrovertible one—is a sufficient vindication of the popular lecture from all the aspersions that have been cast upon it by disappointed aspirants for its honors, and shallow observers of its tendencies and results.

The choice of a subject has already been spoken of as a matter of importance, and a word should be said touching its manner of treatment. This introduces a discussion of the kind of lecture which at the present time is mainly in demand. Many wise and good men have questioned the character of the popular lecture. In their view, it does not add sufficiently to the stock of popular knowledge. The results are not solid and tangible. They would prefer scientific, or historical, or philosophical discourses. This conviction is so strong with these men, and the men themselves are so much respected, that the people are inclined to coincide with them in the matter of theory, while at the same time they refuse to give their theory practical entertainment. One reason why scientific and historical lectures are not popular is to be found in the difficulty of obtaining lecturers who have sufficient ingenuity and enthusiasm to make such lectures interesting. The number of men in the United States who can make such lectures attractive to popular audiences can be counted on the fingers of a single hand. We have had but one universally popular lecturer on astronomy in twenty years, and he is now numbered among the precious sacrifices of the war. There is only one entirely acceptable popular lecturer on the natural sciences in New England; and what is he among so many?

But this class of lectures has not been widely successful, even under the most favorable circumstances, and with the very best lecturers; and it is to be observed, that they grow less successful with the increasing intelligence of the people. In this fact is to be found an entirely rational and competent explanation of their failure. The schools have done so much toward popularizing science, and the circulating-library has rendered so familiar the prominent facts of history, that men and women do not go to the lecture to learn, and, as far as any appreciably practical benefit is concerned, do not need to go. It is only when some eminent enthusiast in these walks of learning consents to address them that they come out, and then it is rather to place themselves under the influence of his personality than to acquire the knowledge which he dispenses. Facts, if they are identified in any special way with the experience and life of the lecturer, are always acceptable; but facts which are recorded in books find a poor market in the popular lecture-room. Thus, while purely historical and scientific lectures are entirely neglected, narratives of personal travel, which, combine much of historical and scientific interest, have been quite popular, and, indeed, have been the specialties of more than one of the most popular of American lecturers, whose names will be suggested at once by this statement.

Twenty years ago the first popular lectures on anatomy and physiology were given, and a corps of lecturers came up and swept over the whole country, with much of interest and instruction to the people and no small profit to themselves. These lectures called the attention of educators to these sciences. Text-books for schools and colleges were prepared, and anatomy and physiology became common studies for the young. In various ways, through school-books and magazines and newspapers, there has accumulated a stock of popular knowledge of these sciences, and an apprehension of the limit of their practical usefulness, which have quite destroyed the demand for lectures upon them. Though a new generation has risen since the lecture on anatomy and physiology was the rage, no leaner field could possibly be found than that which the country now presents to the popular lecturer on these sciences. These facts are interesting in themselves, and they serve to illustrate the truth of that which has been stated touching lectures upon general historical and scientific subjects.

For facts alone the modern American public does not go hungry. American life is crowded with facts, to which the newspaper gives daily record and diffusion. Ideas, motives, thoughts, these are always in demand. Men wish for nothing more than to know how to classify their facts, what to do with them, how to govern them, and how far to be governed by them; and the man who takes the facts with which the popular life has come into contact and association, and draws from them their nutritive and motive power, and points out their relations to individual and universal good, and organizes around them the popular thought, and uses them to give direction to the popular life, and does all this with masterly skill, is the man whose houses are never large enough to contain those who throng to hear him. This is the popular lecturer, par excellence. The people have an earnest desire to know what a strong, independent, free man has to say about those facts which touch the experience, the direction, and the duty of their daily life; and the lecturer who with a hearty human sympathy addresses himself to this desire, and enters upon the service with genuine enthusiasm, wins the highest reward there is to be won in his field of effort.

The more ill-natured critics of the popular lecturer have reflected with ridicule upon his habit of repetition, A lecturer in full employment will deliver the same discourse perhaps fifty or a hundred times in a single season. There are probably half a dozen favorite lectures which have been delivered from two hundred to five hundred times within the last fifteen years. It does, indeed, at first glance, seem ridiculous for a man to stand, night after night, and deliver the same words, with the original enthusiasm apparently at its full height; and some lecturers, with an extra spice of mirthfulness in their composition, have given public record of their impressions in this respect. There are, however, certain facts to be considered which at least relieve him from the charge of literary sterility. A lecture often becomes famous, and is demanded by each succeeding audience, whatever the lecturer's preferences may be. There are lectures called for every year by audiences and committees which the lecturer would be glad never to see again, and which he never would see again, if he were to consult his own judgment alone. Then the popular lecturer, as has been already intimated, is usually engaged during two thirds of the year in some business or profession whose duties forbid the worthy preparation of more than one discourse for winter use. Then, if he has numerous engagements, he has neither time nor strength to do more than his nightly work; for, among all the pursuits in which literary men engage, none is more exhaustive in its demands upon the nervous energy than that of constant lecturing. The fulfilment of from seventy-five to ninety engagements involves, in round numbers, ten thousand miles of railroad-travel, much of it in the night, and all of it during the most unpleasant season of the year. There is probably nothing short of a military campaign that is attended by so many discomforts and genuine hardships as a season of active lecturing. Unless a man be young and endowed with an extraordinary amount of vital power, he becomes entirely unfitted by his nightly work, and the dissipation consequent upon constant change of scene, for consecutive thought and elaborate composition.

It is fortunate for the lecturer that there is no necessity for variety. The oft-repeated lecture is new to each new audience, and, being thoroughly in hand, and entirely familiar, is delivered with better effect than if the speaker were frequently choosing from a well-furnished repertory. It is popularly supposed that a lecturer loses all interest in a performance which he repeats so many times. This supposition is correct, in certain aspects of the matter, but not in any sense which detracts from his power to make it interesting to others. It is the general experience of lecturers, that, until they have delivered a discourse from ten to twenty times, they are themselves unable to measure its power; so that a performance which is offered at first timidly and with many doubts comes at length to be delivered confidently, and with measurable certainty of acceptance and success. The grand interest of a lecturer is in his new audience, in his experiment on an assembly of fresh minds. The lecture itself is regarded only as an instrument by which a desirable and important result is to be achieved; and familiarity with it, and steady use in its elocutionary handling, are conditions of the best success. Having selected the subject which, at the time, and for the times, he considers freshest and most fruitful, and with thorough care written out all he has to say upon it, there is no call for recurrence to minor themes, either as regards the credit of the lecturer or the best interests of those whom he addresses.

What good has the popular lecture accomplished? Its most enthusiastic advocates will not assert that it has added greatly to the stock of popular knowledge, in science or art, in history, philosophy, or literature; yet the most modest of them may claim that it has bestowed upon American society a permanent good of incalculable value. The relentless foe of all bigotry in politics and religion, the constant opponent of every form of bondage to party and sect, the practical teacher of the broadest toleration of individual opinion, it has had more to do with the steady melioration of the prejudices growing out of denominational interests in Church and State than any other agency whatever. The platform of the lecture-hall has been common ground for the representatives of all our social, political, and religious organizations. It is there that orthodox and heterodox, progressive and conservative, have won respect for themselves and toleration for their opinions by the demonstration of their own manhood, and the recognition of the common human brotherhood; for one has only to prove himself a true man, and to show a universal sympathy with men, to secure popular toleration for any opinion he may hold. Hardly a decade has passed away since, in nearly every Northern State, men suffered social depreciation in consequence of their political and religious opinions. Party and sectarian names have been freely used as reproachful and even as disgraceful epithets. To call a man by the name which he had chosen as the representative of his political or religious opinions was considered equivalent to calling him a knave or a fool; and if it happened that he was in the minority, his name alone was regarded as the stamp of social degradation. Now, thanks to the influence of the popular lecture mainly, men have made, and are rapidly making, room for each other. A man may be in the minority now without consequently being in personal disgrace. Men of liberal and even latitudinarian views are generously received in orthodox communities, and those of orthodox faith are gladly welcomed by men who subscribe to a shorter creed and bear a broader charter of life and liberty. There certainly has never been a time in the history of America when there was such generous and general toleration of all men and all opinions as now; and as the popular lecture has been universal, with a determined aim and a manifest influence toward this end, it is but fair to claim for it a prominent agency in the result.

Another good which may be counted among the fruits of the popular lecture is the education of the public taste in intellectual amusements. The end which the lecture-goer seeks is not always improvement, in any respect. Multitudes of men and women have attended the lecture to be interested, and to be interested intellectually is to be intellectually amused. Lecturers who have appealed simply to the emotional nature, without attempting to engage the intellect, have ceased to be popular favorites. So far as the popular lecture has taken hold of the affections of a community, and secured its constant support, it has destroyed the desire for all amusements of a lower grade; and it will be found, that, generally, those who attend the lecture rarely or never give their patronage and presence to the buffooneries of the day. They have found something better,—something with more of flavor in the eating, with more of nutriment in the digestion. How great a good this is those only can judge who realize that men will have amusements of some sort, and that, if they cannot obtain such as will elevate them, they will indulge in such as are frivolous and dissipating. The lecture does quite as much for elevated amusement out of the hall as in it. The quickening social influence of an excellent lecture, particularly in a community where life flows sluggishly and all are absorbed in manual labor, is as remarkable as it is beneficent. The lecture and the lecturer are the common topics of discussion for a week, and the conversation which is so apt to cling to health and the weather is raised above the level of commonplace.

Notwithstanding the fact that a moiety, or a majority, of the popular lecturers are clergymen, the lecture has not always received the favor of the cloth. Indeed, there has often been private and sometimes public complaint on the part of preachers, that the finished productions of the lecturer, the results of long and patient elaboration, rendered doubly attractive by a style of delivery to be won only by frequent repetition of the same discourse, have brought the hastily prepared and plainly presented Sunday sermon into an unjust and damaging comparison. The complaint is a strange one, particularly as no one has ever claimed that the highest style of eloquence or the most remarkable models of rhetoric are to be found in the lecture-hall. There has, at least, been no general conviction that a standard of excellence in English and its utterance has been maintained there too high for the comfort and credit of the pulpit. It is possible, therefore, that the pulpit betrays its weak point, and needs the comparison which it deprecates. A man of brains will gratefully receive suggestions from any quarter. That impulses to a more familiar and direct style of sermonizing, a brighter and better elocution, and a bolder utterance of personal convictions, have come to the pulpit from the platform, there is no question. This feeling on the part of preachers is by no means universal, however; for some of them have long regarded the lecture with contempt, and have sometimes resented it as an impertinence. And it may be (for there shall be no quarrel in the matter) that lecturers are quacks, and that lectures, like homoeopathic remedies, are very contemptible things; but they have pleasantly modified the doses of the old practice, however slow the doctors are to confess it; and so much, at least, may be counted among the beneficent results of the system under discussion.

Last in the brief enumeration of the benefits of the popular lecture, it has been the devoted, consistent, never tiring champion of universal liberty. If the popular lecturer has not been a power in this nation for the overthrow of American Slavery,—for its overthrow in the conscientious convictions and the legal and conventional fastnesses of the nation,—then have the friends of oppression grossly lied; for none have received their malicious and angry objurgations more unsparingly than our plain-speaking gentleman who makes his yearly circuit among the lyceums. No champion of slavery, no advocate of privilege, no apologist for systematized and legalized wrong has ever been able to establish himself as a popular lecturer. The people may listen respectfully to such a man once; but, having heard him, they drop him forever. In truth, a man cannot be a popular lecturer who does not plant himself upon the eternal principles of justice. He must be a democrat, a believer in and an advocate of the equal rights of men. A slavery-loving, slavery-upholding lecturer would be just as much of an anomaly as a slavery-loving and slavery-singing poet. The taint so vitiates the whole Æsthetic nature, so poisons the moral sense, so palsies the finer powers, so destroys all true sympathy with universal humanity, that the composition of an acceptable lecture becomes impossible to the man who bears it. The popular lecture, as it has been described in this article, has never existed at the South, and could not be tolerated there. Until within three years it has never found opportunity for utterance in the capital of the nation; but where liberty goes, it makes its way, and helps to break the way for liberty everywhere.

It is a noteworthy fact, that the popular lecturer, though the devoted advocate of freedom to the slave, has rarely been regarded as either a trustworthy or an important man in the party which has represented his principles in this country. He has always been too free to be a partisan, too radical and intractable for a party seeking power or striving to preserve it. No party of any considerable magnitude has ever regarded him as its expositor. A thousand times have party-speakers and party-organs, professing principles identical with his own, washed their hands of all responsibility for his utterances. Even now, when the sound of falling shackles is in the air, and the smoke of the torment of the oppressor fills the sky, old partisans of freedom cannot quite forget their stupid and hackneyed animosities, but still bemoan the baleful influence of this fiery itinerant. Representative of none but himself, disowned or hated by all parties, acknowledging responsibility to God and his own conscience only, he has done his work, and done it well,—done it amid careful questionings and careless curses,—done it, and been royally paid for it, when speakers who fairly represented the political and religious prejudices of the people could not have called around them a baker's dozen, with tickets at half-price or at no price at all.

When the cloud which now envelops the country shall gather up its sulphurous folds and roll away, tinted in its retiring by the smile of God beaming from a calm sky upon a nation redeemed to freedom and justice, and the historian, in the light of that smile, shall trace home to their fountains the streams of influence and power which will then join to form the river of the national life, he will find one, starting far inland among the mountains, longer than the rest and mightier than most, and will recognize it as the confluent outpouring of living, Christian speech, from ten thousand lecture-platforms, on which free men stood and vindicated the right of man to freedom.