mother's and a patriot's love, she had shot the light of love from
her eyes, and poured the blessings of love from her lips, on the
people that had JEOPARDED THEIR LIVES UNTO THE DEATH against the
oppressors; and the bitterness, awakened and borne aloft by the same
love, she precipitated in curses on the selfish and coward recreants
who CAME NOT TO THE HELP OF THE LORD, TO THE HELP OF THE LORD,
AGAINST THE MIGHTY. As long as I have the image of Deborah before my
eyes, and while I throw myself back into the age, country,
circumstances, of this Hebrew Bonduca in the not yet tamed chaos of
the spiritual creation;--as long as I contemplate the impassioned,
high-souled, heroic woman in all the prominence and individuality of
will and character,--I feel as if I were among the first ferments of
the great affections--the proplastic waves of the microcosmic chaos,
swelling up against--and yet towards--the outspread wings of the dove
that lies brooding on the troubled waters. So long all is well,--all
replete with instruction and example. In the fierce and inordinate I
am made to know and be grateful for the clearer and purer radiance
which shines on a Christian's paths, neither blunted by the
preparatory veil, nor crimsoned in its struggle through the all-
enwrapping mist of the world's ignorance: whilst in the self-
oblivion of these heroes of the Old Testament, their elevation above
all low and individual interests,--above all, in the entire and
vehement devotion of their total being to the service of their divine
Master, I find a lesson of humility, a ground of humiliation, and a
shaming, yet rousing, example of faith and fealty. But let me once
be persuaded that all these heart-awakening utterances of human
hearts--of men of like faculties and passions with myself, mourning,
rejoicing, suffering, triumphing--are but as a Divina Commedia of a
superhuman--O bear with me, if I say--Ventriloquist;--that the royal
harper, to whom I have so often submitted myself as a MANY-STRINGED