Letters of Lydia Maria Child, with a biographical introduction by John G. Whittier and an appendix by Wendell Phillips.

136 LFJLETTERS.
young men afterward conspicuous in public life,
through whose agency the cause was better served
than it could have been by me. From that timne to
this, I have labored too earnestly for the slave to be
agreeable to slave-llolders. Literary popularity was
never a paramount object with me, even in my
youth; and, now that I am old, I am utterly indifferent to it. But, if I cared for the exclusion you
threaten, I should at least have the consolation of
being exiled with honorable company. Dr. Channing's writings, mild and candid as they are, breatlie
what you would call arrant treason. William C.
Bryant, in his capacity of editor, is openly on our
side. The inspired muse of Whittier has incessantly
sounded the trumpet for moral warfare with your iniquitous institution; and his stirring tones have been
answered, more or less loudly, by Pierpont, Lowell,
and Longfellow. Emerson, the Plato of America,
leaves the scholastic seclusion he loves so well, and,
disliking noise with all his poetic soul, bravely takes
his stand among the trumpeters. George'W. Curtis,
the brilliant writer, the eloquent lecturer, the elegant
man of the world, lays the wealth of his talent on
the altar of Freedom, and makes common cause with
rough-shod reformers.
The genius of MArs. Stowe carried the outworks of
your institution at one dash, and left the citadel open
to besiegers, who are pouring in amain. In the
church, on the ultra-liberal side, it is assailed by the
powerful battering-ram of Theodore Parker's eloquence. On the extreme orthodox side is set a huge
fire, kindled by the burning words of Dr. Cheever.
Between them is Henry Ward Beecher, sending a
shower of keen arrows into your iutrenchments; and