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Show GEFFEOY'S TRIALS. 59 I bared my breast to traitors, I ran upon my sword in the despair of Brutus. " But when I read the bright annals of Geneva's better days, it was as though I had breathed an intoxicating incense; and in the Refor-mation I found a vein of antique heroism. Calvin, Pascal, the Wai-dense, the Albigense, I wept over their sorrows and trials, was warmed with their struggles, and glad in their triumphs. Not their religion, but the exaltation of their patriotism excited me. How dull, then, seemed the common- place life of our trading town, how mean its petty economies; and how unworthy the destiny my parents had so fondly imagined for me. The beautiful land and city which patriot reformers had early saved from papal Rome, now seemed given up to the gods of materialism and sold wholly to the commercial Satan. I was blinded to the heroism of common life the true greatness of the many who daily toil and suffer for those they love. " Before reaching my eighteenth year I fully determined to seek a land where political systems were yet to be developed, and might be modeled upon abstract equity. I would be a citizen of the Republic of Humanity. But where was such a land to be found ? The revolu-tion of 1830 had only resulted in giving France another king; and their so- called moderate monarchy I looked upon with abhorrence. Like my classic models, I believed the very name of king incompatible with freedom. England was still less tolerable. I associated it with all that was hateful in titles and hereditary privileges. The New World was the place to look for the Brotherhood of Man ; for the very air of Europe was poisoned with priestcraft, and its soil barren of high resolve. The South American States were struggling toward an auton-omy, but, with the subtle instinct of the Teutonic blood, I distrusted the lofty professions of a Latin race. Their short- lived liberty dem-onstrated an inherent incapacity to respect the individual right, and their young republic was only old despotism under new names and forms. Republics, I was persuaded, could not coexist with priests ; for with their politics I had nearly rejected my people's religion. " With the little sum I could gain by long pleading with my parents, I sought this republic, persuaded that here, when one met a man, he met a brother. " Need I say that I was cruelly disappointed. Without nobility, there was almost equal caste ; and without old families, there was equal tyranny in the new. Wealth and color made classes as widely diver-gent as rank and birth, and in the boasted land of liberty, one- tenth of the whole population were bondsmen. The republic was ruled by |