my devotion, to my manliness, to my honesty, and to my patriotism; which
faith I will honestly answer without ambition, without interest, as
faithfully as ever, but more skillfully, because schooled by adversities.
And I have the credential of the justice of the cause I plead, and of the
wonderful sympathy which, not my person, but that cause, has met, and
meets, in two hemispheres. These are my credentials, and nothing else. To
whom this is enough, he will help me, so far as the law permits and it is
his good pleasure. To whom these credentials are not sufficient, let him
look for a better accredited man.

LXXIX.

THE IDES OF MARCH.

To-day is the fourth anniversary of the Revolution in Hungary.

Anniversaries of revolutions are almost always connected with the
recollections of some patriot's death,--fallen on that day, like the
Spartans at Thermopyla, martyrs of devotion to their fatherland.

Almost in every country there is some proud cemetery, or some modest
tombstone, adorned on such a day by a garland of evergreen,--the pious
offering of patriotic tenderness. I passed the last night in a sleepless
dream; and my soul wandered on the magnetic wings of the past, home to my
beloved, bleeding land. And I saw, in the dead of the night, dark veiled
shapes, with the paleness of eternal grief upon their brow--but terrible in
the fearless silence of that grief--gliding over the churchyards of Hungary
and kneeling down to the head of the graves, and depositing the pious
tribute of green and cypress upon them; and, after a short prayer, rising
with clenched fists and gnashing teeth, and then stealing away tearless!