The special perils which aroused the age of chivalry have passed away. Monsters, in the form of dragons, griffins, or unicorns, no longer ravage the land. Giants have disappeared from the scene. Robbers have been dislodged from castle and forest. Godeschal the Iron-hearted, and Robin Hood, are each without descendants. In the new forms which society assumes, touched by the potent wand of trade, there is no place for any of these. But wrong and outrage are not yet extinct. Cast out of one body, they enter straightway another, whence, too, they must be cast out. Alas! in our day, amidst all this teeming civilization, with the horn of Abundance at our gates, with the purse of Fortunatus in our hands, with professions of Christianity on our lips, and with the merchant installed in the high places of Chivalry, there are sorrows not less poignant than those which once enkindled knightly sympathy, and there is wrong which vies in loathsomeness with early monsters, in power with early giants, and in existing immunity with robbers once sheltered by castle and forest,--stalking through your streets in the abused garb of Law itself, and by its hateful presence dwarfing all the atrocities of another age. A wicked man is a deplorable sight; but a wicked law is worse than any wicked man, even than the wretch who steals human beings from their home in Africa; nor can its outrage be redressed by any incidental charities, perishing at night as manna in the wilderness. Like the monster, it must be overpowered; like the robber, it must be chained; like the wild beast, it must be exterminated. To the merchant, then, especially to the young merchant, I appeal, by the position you have won and by the power which is yours,--go forth to redress these grievances, whatever they may be, whether in the sufferings of the solitary soul or audaciously organized in the likeness of law. That I may not seem to hold up any impracticable standard, that the path of duty may not appear difficult, and that no young man need hesitate, even though he find himself alone and opposed by numbers, let me present briefly, as becomes the hour, the example and special achievement of GRANVILLE SHARP, the humble Englishman, who, without wealth, fame, or power, did not hesitate to set himself against the merchants of the time, against the traditions of the English bar, against the authority of learned lawyers, and against the power of magistrates, until, by persevering effort, he compelled the highest tribunal of the land to declare the grand constitutional truth, that the slave who sets his foot on British ground becomes that instant free. His character of pure and courageous principle may be little regarded yet; but as time advances, it will become a guiding luminary. There are stars aloft, centres of other systems, in such depths of firmament that only after the lapse of ages does their light reach this small ball which we call earth.