Since our student's interview with one of the leading representatives of American journalism, several months had elapsed; but as yet there had been no fulfilment of the journalist's promise to communicate the result of his conference with the other leaders, to whom he had proposed to submit, for general consideration and future action, the legal status of the civil rights of American citizens of African descent. From this prolonged delay the student began to fear, as thousands of these very citizens in the hopelessness of their despair had anxiously feared, that the enormous shadow of race-prejudice, which had cast its dark form over the fresh clear glance of many lovers of civil liberty in America, might also dim the bright and shining lights which the great luminary had gathered around himself. Like many of our citizens, he began at last to indulge in gloomy forebodings respecting the course of the American press; for the unbounded radiance of hope which had dawned anew with the freshness of each morn, at length began to fade. The worshipper at the shrine of civil liberty had awaited for the summons "to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow," until hope deferred had made his heart sick, and the melancholy doubt crept over him, whether it might not transpire that, after all, even the leaders of the press were but weak and degenerate beings. As he sat in the dim loneliness of twilight which brought no tidings of good cheer, it, too, seemed to forebode that "the darkness of the dead deep," with its night of despair, was gathering, and would soon settle down upon the fair morn of civil liberty which had arisen in America.
One evening he walked forth to hold his customary communion with nature, and listen to her ever-varied language; and as he gazed, with his majestic forehead and royally-arched temples, "a very palace of thought," with his serene face raised in the attitude of prayer, and looked steadfastly upon the "floor of heaven thick-inlaid with patens of bright gold," and watched the golden candles in the cloudless canopy of blue, so far, far away, lit silently, one by one, by the hand divine which had fixed them in the air, all these gloomy forebodings vanished; and he seemed to behold, in the starry firmament, the express image of Civil Liberty looking down upon the earth with all
