But what a spectacle of degraded functions, when poets,
historians, and religious thinkers bow the knee to an aristocracy so
vilely proud to stretch forth its hand of fellowship to a slaveholding
brotherhood beyond the sea! We need not denounce them. The ideas they
pretend to stand for hold them in scorn. The imagination whose pictures
they drew will quench all her lustre for the deserters that devote
themselves to the slavish passions of the hour. The history whose tales
of glory and ignominy they related will rear a gibbet for their own
reputation in the future time. As for us, at the present, we mention not
their names, but, like the injured ghost in the poet's picture of the
world of spirits, turn from them silently and pass on. We remember there
was a grand old republican in the realm of letters, John Milton by name,
whose shade must be terrible to their thoughts. Let them beware of
making of themselves a public shame. The great revenge of years will
turn into a mere trick of literature the prose and verse of all not
inspired by devotion to humanity, zeal for the cause of the oppressed,
and a hearty love of truth, while every covering of lies shall be torn
away.
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