It is just about a year since “Brown of Ossawatomie” was hung in the South, for unwise interference with slavery. He was not wholly a martyr; there were blood-stains on his hands, though no murder was in his heart. He was a brave man and a Christian, and his blood, unrighteously shed, still cries to heaven from the ground. Who knows but this is the beginning of the answer? But that judicial murder was not the only wrong for which the slaveholding South is now bringing herself before the bar of judgment, before earth and heaven. The secret things of darkness are coming to light, and the question will be decided rightly, I firmly believe. And the South is to be pitied, as all hardened and blinded wrong-doers should be! I believe the North will show herself a noble foe, if foe the South determines to make her. CHAPTER V. THE BEGINNING OF THE WAR. January 20, 1861. I have run over the birth-histories of the nations of Europe, in their chaotic rise from barbarism; and have just completed a bird’s-eye view of Italian mediæval history, with Koeppen’s aid. The present history of Italy interests me greatly, and I would like to be able to link the present with the past. But what a debatable ground it has always been, and how unsparingly it has always been made mince-meat of, by all in authority there! But all that history has revealed shows no more important epoch than the one in which we are living at this moment, in our unsettled and discordant Union. I hope it will come out plain and positive, as a question of right or wrong for every man to decide. It is so already, yet all will not see. So I hope that the demon of slavery, that “mystery of iniquity,” will make his evil way evident, that we may return to no vile compact with sin. February 28. The bluebirds have come! and the meadow-lark has sung over in the fields behind the garden, these two or three mornings. I have dreamed of spring these many nights, and now it is coming--coming! What a blessing dreams are! I have heard birds sing, in bluer skies than May could show; doves have alighted on my head; violets, such as cannot be matched in any meadows for perfect tints and fragrance, have blossomed at my feet; have wept for joy at the sublime beauty of Alps grander than any real Alps,--which I would yet fain see, though I shall not, with these eyes,--all this in my winter dreams. Through dreams, we must always believe in a deeper and more perfect beauty than we know. The world is lovely, but there is a lovelier, else we could not see what we do in sleep. The glory of living is that life _is_ glorious beyond all our possible imaginations,--the eternal life,--the “glory that shall be revealed” in us.