University of Virginia Library

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449

XVII.—REVIEW OF THE HISTORY.

This is a strange and crowded history. Not only the great day on which
the Declaration was signed, and a Continent declared free, has been described,
but the eternal cause of that Declaration, reaching over a dark chaos of
eighteen hundred years, has been recognized in its characters of light and
beauty. From the day of July the Fourth, 1776, we have gone to the day
when the world was in mourning for its God—incarnating in the form of a
mechanic, by the death of shame, on the felon's cross. We have traced the
great facts of the Rights of Man, from humble Independence Hall, to the
awful cliff of Calvary. From Christ the Redeemer, we have followed the
track of light through the mist of ages, down to his great apostle, the Paul
of the seventeeth century, William Penn. From Penn to Washington and
Jefferson and Adams and Paine, all human, yet rising into heroes through
the majesty of their intellect. The career of Paine,—now writing his bold
book in darkness, hunger and cold, now following the footsteps of Washington's
army, striking mortal blows with his pen, into the very heart of
British cruelty—has led us into the vortex of the French Revolution, the
glorious and bloody child of our own. Through the cloud of that fearful
time, we have endeavored to follow the track of light, separating its rays
from the dark shadow of the Guillotine, and beholding its omen of good,
even above the crimson waves of the Seine.

Nor have we faltered, when it became our sad task to witness the downfall
of Thomas Paine. An awful lesson is conveyed in his sad history. So
bright the dawning of that star, so dark its going out into hopeless night!
Now, the intimate friend of Washington and the other heroes, and again, a
desolate old man, withered by the bigot's breath, and dying—desolate, O!
how desolate and alone!

It becomes our task now, to follow four of the Signers, in their way
through the valley of the shadow of death. We have not space nor time
to picture the lives of all the signers; from among the host of heroes, we
will select but four immortal names.

From the death-chamber of Paine, to other scenes where the voice of the
messenger falls on the freezing ear, and his cold finger seals the glassy
eye.