or the nation's duty in regard to its extinction. His first reference to
the question appeared in connection with a notice made by him in the
_Free Press_ of a spirited poem, entitled "Africa," in which the
authoress sings of:

"The wild and mingling groans of writhing millions,
Calling for vengeance on my guilty land."


He commended the verses "to all those who wish to cherish female genius,
and whose best feelings are enlisted in the cause of the poor oppressed
sons of Africa." He was evidently impressed, but the impression belonged
to the ordinary, transitory sort. His next recorded utterance on the
subject was also in the _Free Press_. It was made in relation with some
just and admirable strictures on the regulation Fourth of July oration,
with its "ceaseless apostrophes to liberty, and fierce denunciations of
tyranny." Such a tone was false and mischievous--the occasion was for
other and graver matter. "There is one theme," he declares, "which
should be dwelt upon, till our whole country is free from the curse--it
is slavery." The emphasis and energy of the rebuke and exhortation lifts
this second allusion to slavery, quite outside of merely ordinary
occurrences. It was not an ordinary personal occurrence for it served to
reveal in its lightning-like flash the glow and glare of a conscience
taking fire. The fire slumbered until a few weeks before Lundy entered
Boston, when there were again the glow and glare of a moral sense in the
first stages of ignition on the enormity of slave institutions. The act
of South Carolina in making it illegal to teach a colored person to read
and write struck this spark from his pen: "There is something
unspeakably pitiable and alarming," he writes in the _Philanthropist_,
"in the state of that society where it is deemed necessary, for