NAPOLEON'S MIDNIGHT REVIEW.

219

for that catastrophe? I did not build the mountain, or fill it with explosive materials. I merely warned the men that were in danger. So, now, it is not I who am stimulating men to the violent pursuit of their acknowledged constitutional rights.

The class which has hitherto ruled in this country has failed miserably. It revels in power and wealth, whilst at its feet, a terrible peril for its future, lies the multitude which it has neglected. If a class has failed, let us try the nation.

That is our faith, that is our purpose, that is our cry. Let us try the nation. This it is which has called together these countless numbers of the people to demand a change; and from these gatherings, sublime in their vastness and their resolution, I think I see, as it were, above the hill-tops of time, the glimmerings of the dawn of a better and a nobler day for the country and for the people that I love so well.

104. NAPOLEON'S MIDNIGHT REVIEW.

T midnight, from his grave

AT

The drummer woke and rose,

And beating loud the drum,
Forth in his rounds he goes.

Stirred by his faithful arms,

The drumsticks patly fall;
He beats the loud retreat,
Réveillé and roll-call.

So grandly rolls that drum,
So deep it echoes round,

Beneath the casque their blanchéd skulls
Smile grim, and proud their air,

As in their iron hands

Their long, sharp swords they bear.

And at midnight from his tomb

The chief awoke, and rose ;

And followed by his staff,

With slow steps on he goes.

A little hat he wears,

A coat quite plain has he,

HERE is proof, gentlemen, stronger than all this.

THE

It is silent, yet speaking. It is that idiotic smile which plays continually on the face of the prisoner.

222

INSANITY OF FREEMAN.

It took its seat there while he was in the State Prison. In his solitary cell, under the pressure of his severe tasks and trials in the workshop, and during the solemnities of public worship in the chapel, it appealed, although in vain, to his task-masters and his teachers. It is a smile never rising into laughter, without motive or cause the smile of vacuity.

His mother saw it when he came out of prison, and it broke her heart. His sister saw it, and knew her brother was demented. It has never forsaken him in his later trials. He laughed in the face of the jailer while on confession at Baldwinsville. He laughed involuntarily in the faces of Custis, and Austin, and Smith, and Spencer. He laughs perpetually here. Even when the accusers showed the scarred traces of the assassin's knife, and when the witnesses related the dreadful story of the murder, he laughed.

He laughs while I am pleading his griefs. Ile laughs when the Attorney General's bolts should seem to rive his heart. He will laugh when you declare him guilty. When the judge shall proceed to the last fatal ceremony, and demand what he has to say why the sentence of the law should not be pronounced upon him, although there should not be an unmoistened eye in this vast assembly, and the stern voice addressing him should tremble with emotion, he will even then look up in the face of the court and laugh from the irresistible emotions of a shattered mind, delighted and lost in the confused memory of absurd and ridiculous associations. Follow him to the scaffold. The executioner can not disturb the calmness of the idiot. He will laugh in the agony of death.

Do you know the significance of this, strange and

INSANITY OF FREEMAN.

223

unnatural risibility? It is a proof that God does not forsake even the poor wretch whom we pity or despise. There are in every human memory a well of joys and a fountain of sorrows. Disease opens wide

the one and seals up the other forever.

I have seen capital cases, where the parents, brothers, sisters, friends, of the accused surrounded him, eagerly hanging upon the lips of his advocate, and watching, in the countenances of the court and jury every smile and frown which might seem to indicate his fate. But there is no such scene here. The prisoner, though in the greenness of youth, is withered, decayed, senseless, almost lifeless. He has no father here. The descendant of slaves, that father died a victim to the vices of a superior race. There is no mother here, for her child is stained and polluted with the blood of mothers and of a sleeping infant," and he looks and laughs so that she cannot bear to look upon him." There is no brother, nor sister, nor friend here. Popular rage against the accused has driven them hence, and scattered his kindred and people.

On the other side, I notice the aged and venerable parents and the surviving children of the murdered man, and all around are mourning and sympathizing friends. I know not at whose instance they have come. I dare not say they ought not to be here. But I must say to you that we live in a Christian and not in a savage state, and that the affliction which has fallen upon these mourners, and upon us, was sent to teach them and us mercy, and not retaliation; that, although we may send this maniac to the scaffold, it will not recall to life the manly form of Van Nest, nor