At this Mr. Patterson glanced at us with a quiet meaning, and turning to Mr. Sears, he continued: “The elder Adams taught school—he whose eloquence Jefferson has so loudly lauded—the man who was for liberty or death, and so expressed himself in that beautiful letter to his wife. Do you not remember that passage, sir, where he speaks of the Fourth being greeted thereafter with bonfires and illuminations? His son, Johnny Q., taught school. My dark-eyed friend Webster, who is now figuring so gloriously in the halls of Congress and in the Supreme Court, taught school. Judge Rowan, of Kentucky, a master spirit too, taught school. Who was that ‘Who passed the flaming bounds of time and space, The living throne, the sapphire blaze, Where angels tremble as they gaze: Who saw, but, blasted with excess of light, Closed his eyes in endless night’— Who was he? Milton, the glorious, the sublime—who, in his aspirations for human liberty, prayed to that great spirit who, as he himself says, “sends forth the fire from his altar to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleaseth”—Milton, the schoolmaster. ‘If fallen in evil days on evil tongues, Milton appealed to the avenger, Time: If Time, the avenger, execrates his wrongs, And if the word ‘Miltonic’ mean ‘sublime,’ He deigned not to belie his soul in songs, Nor turn his very talent to a crime; He did not loathe the sire to laud the son, But closed the tyrant-hater he begun. ‘Thinkest thou, could he—the blind old man—arise, Like Samuel, from the grave, to freeze once more The blood of monarchs with his prophecies, Or be alive again—again, all hoar With time and trials, and those helpless eyes And heartless daughters, worn, and pale, and poor—’ Would he not be proud of his vocation, when he reflected how many great spirits had followed his example? The schoolmaster is indeed abroad. Mr. Sears, let us drink the health of the blind old man eloquent.” “Thank you, thank you, Mr. Patterson, but before my scholars, under the circumstances, it would be setting a bad example, when existing circumstances prove they need a good one. Sir, it was thought that I should not return from Baltimore until to-morrow, and this advantage has been taken of my absence. But, Mr. Patterson, when such distinguished gentlemen as yourself set the example, I know not what to say.” “Forgive them, sir, forgive them,” said Patterson, in his blandest tone. “Let them repair to their homes, then, instantly. Mr. Patterson, your eloquent conversation had made me forget myself; I don’t wonder they should have forgotten themselves. Let them depart.”