your souls the grapes on which, for twelve years, a mob of jeering devils, drunken with excess of malice and of hate, danced to the derisive laughter of half the nation. Twelve years, four thousand days and nights of torture, of shame, of humiliation for yourselves, your wives, your daughters, your tender children. Four thousand days and nights, and to the proud and sensitive nature smarting under indignity, every moment is an age. Burke and Pitt lifted their voices in behalf of the oppressed Colonies; the "loud cry of trampled Hindostan" awakened the eloquence of Sheridan, but the Poland of America— "Found not a generous friend, a pitying foe, "Naked and desolate she stands, Her name a by-word in all lands." No man of commanding genius in either branch of the national legislature stepped forth to plead her cause in words that might have shaken both continents, and be quoted for all time. Not one of the Northern poets-those gentle beings whose hearts bleed at every wrong from Tartary to Timbuctoo— could pen a line for Carolina. Gordon, of Georgia, was your friend, good and true; and at the last your advocate and champion was that press which men aforetime loved to call satanic-the New York Herald-and the poets who sang your wrongs were of your own rearing. Yes. Carolinians, you have been tried as by fire, and by that fire the dross has been purged away, leaving metal of proof only. I look to see here a race of men nobler than any that have gone before. Already from the flames emerges a figure, calm, contained, majestic as an antique bronze-a form to which all eyes were lately turned in admiration, and in gratitude that outweighed admiration, for he had saved his country from civil war—Anaxandron Agamemnon, Wade Hampton, King of Men! Happy the land that claims him as her chief magistrate. Happy the nation if he were but its ruler. Having suffered all things, he would see that no section, no State, suffered needlessly. Having braved all things, he fears nothing; and having endured all things, he would brook with equal patience the malice of his foes and the deadlier flattery of his friends. Is it too much to hope that he will take the place in Washington for which he is so well fitted? It may never be; but the day that sees him, or some such Southern man, installed in power will be the dawn of peace, the end of the war. But stay; I am told that near at hand there is somewhat to eat and drink withal. Come, let us sacrifice the bird dear to Minerva; let us boil the owl in Falernian or the Cæcuban vintage, and, having dined on fools, we will sup on concentrated wisdom. THE LOCAL EDITOR TAKES A TURN IT ON THE ICE.* T would not be safe, perhaps, to say how many years have elapsed since the Local used to figure -and that extensively-upon the frozen waters of "the Jarsies." Certain it is that he did figure there, at a period when a pair of skates and half-a-pint of chestnuts were inestimable treasures, and when the ladies were no more to him than money is now. Subsequent to that period, he was one fine winter's day called upon incontinently to explore the bottom of a mill-pond in Delaware; and, finding things in that depression unusually moist and somewhat chilly, he has, until lately, been content to entrust his standing in society and his progress in the world to such feeble drum-sticks as nature, in no lavish mood, has provided him with. Would that he had remained content. But in an evil hour last week, he was persuaded by a party of good fellows to go down to the river and take a look at the boys skating. Down he went, and got upon the bosom of the "noble Jeems" at a point where he never expected to have gone, except in a cat-fish dug-out or a dismantled, idle batteau. He stepped upon the Jeems right under * Published in the Lynchburg Virginian, probably in 1856. the toll-bridge, and pattered along down to the upper end of Percival's Island, where a hundred or more boys and men were wheeling, circling, and skimming airily around, like so many swallows on a sultry evening when insects are thick above the fields. ness. Here the Local paused to enjoy himself. It was an Arctic scene, and beautiful in its perfect dreariAround were the mighty hills, whose iron ribs the snow but half-concealed; at their feet, the dead still trees stood naked and stone-like; beneath was the ice, white or blue, according to its thickness and the greater or less intermixture of snow; and over all hung the dark grey sky, dull and cold and hopeless. But the frozen pavement was ringing and murmuring under the steel-clad heels of the skaters; and as the Local looked on he became greatly enlivened, and wished the ladies were there to enjoy the pretty sight. It was pretty. The grown men were gliding leisurely about, gracefully curling here and there, first upon one leg and then upon the other,. describing Hogarth's line of beauty at every stroke and caring more about elegance thau fun; while the boys were cutting along at a prodigious lick, chasing a ball as if the devil or the school-master were chasing them. The Local became excited, and thought to himself "Wouldn't we take these fellows down a button hole or two, if we only had a pair of skates? We rather guess we'd teach them a trick we learned in the Jarsies, that would open their eyes, wide." Just then, as bad luck would have it, up comes a benevolent gentleman with tender feet, who proffers the Local his skates. Local accepts with thanks, and as he fastens tight the last strap, begins to feel sorry for the people he was about to astonish, and to apologize mentally for the extraordinary dexterity he knew he would display. "Now, my little boys," said he to himself, "don't be jealous. Recollect I was taught in the Jarsies, and I dare say if you all had the advantages I had, you would be pretty good skaters yourselves." Thereupon the Local rose and stood up. "Softly, softly," he whispered, "we won't astonish them too much at first. We'll just take it quietly for a while, until we get the hang of it, and then we'll come out like a sky-rocket." Accordingly he shuffled along some twenty yards, and-called a halt. He felt gouty; and his organ of weight was somehow wrong. Things didn't work right any way. There was at times an obsequious inclination forward, as if he had been an idolater in the presence of Vishnu, or (which was more probable, he being a very intelligent man) as if the great mass of his brain was in his forehead. At other times, the inclination backwards was something unquestionably dreadful. If he had been the father of a large family going up a slippery hill at midnight with a peck of apples for the children in his coat-tail pocket, he could not have felt a weightier or more dangerous responsibility either behind or before. In fact, the disposition to sit down-and that with ungenteel haste-was almost irresistible. While this was the state of his |