Such, briefly and faintly sketched, was the state of affairs among these poor people in the City of the Fugitive at that period. What wonder men of heart desponded? It was not a despised Abolitionist, but an Abolitionist whom none despise—the Lord of Civilization standing calm above the ages, he whose spirit slowly wins the world from wrong; it was Francis Bacon of Verulam who said that when Commerce dominates in the State, the State is in its decline. Commerce dominated then. Science, arts, laws, religion, morality, humanity, justice, liberty, the rights, the hearts of mankind—all must give way to it. Rapacious and insolent, it ruled and flourished over all. Yet there were rays of hope and auguries of better days in Boston even then, and the new was stirring in the old. Emerson was saturating the intellectual life of the city, and through it the mind of America, with the nobleness of his thought. Theodore Parker, gigantesque in learning, courage, devotion to mankind, less a man than a Commonwealth of noble powers, was in his pulpit, with a strong and growing hold on the minds and hearts of the people. The Abolitionists were toiling terribly with all their splendid might of conscience, their genius and their eloquence, to rouse the North to a settlement with the Slave Oligarchy. The Free-Soilers were indefatigably laboring to prevent the base and brutal Democrats from crowding out free American labor from the Territories and incoming States with the labor of Congo and Ashantee; and laboring also to get the Government out of the control of the Slave Power. In a word, Liberty was fighting her battle with Trade, and even the defeats of Liberty are victories. Add to all that a fair ray of hope and promise still lingered at that period in the air of Boston, cast from a little society of Socialists, under the leadership of William Henry Channing, which had been dissolved about two years before. They had lit their torch from the old faith that Human Life has its Science, discovering which we rear earth’s Golden Age. It was the old idea of Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras; it was the dream of Campanella and More; it was the divine and deathless purpose of Bacon, and the holy labor of Fourier. The Socialists in Boston had made a limited but profound impression with it, which had outlasted their dissolution. The light of the torch still lived when the torch itself was extinguished; and amidst the sordor and selfishness and cruelty of the period, it showed that the tradition and the promise of the Good Time Coming were immortal. CHAPTER II. THE FENCING SCHOOL.