I have the credential that I trust to God in heaven, to justice on earth; that I offend no laws, but cling to the protection of the laws. I have the credential of my people's undeniable confidence and its unshaken faith; to my devotion, to my manliness, to my honesty, and to my patriotism; which faith I will honestly answer without ambition, without interest, as faithfully as ever, but more skillfully, because schooled by adversities. And I have the credential of the justice of the cause I plead, and of the wonderful sympathy which, not my person, but that cause, has met, and meets, in two hemispheres. These are my credentials, and nothing else. To whom this is enough, he will help me, so far as the law permits and it is his good pleasure. To whom these credentials are not sufficient, let him look for a better accredited man. LXXIX. THE IDES OF MARCH. To-day is the fourth anniversary of the Revolution in Hungary. Anniversaries of revolutions are almost always connected with the recollections of some patriot's death,--fallen on that day, like the Spartans at Thermopylæ, martyrs of devotion to their fatherland. Almost in every country there is some proud cemetery, or some modest tombstone, adorned on such a day by a garland of evergreen,--the pious offering of patriotic tenderness. I passed the last night in a sleepless dream; and my soul wandered on the magnetic wings of the past, home to my beloved, bleeding land. And I saw, in the dead of the night, dark veiled shapes, with the paleness of eternal grief upon their brow--but terrible in the fearless silence of that grief--gliding over the churchyards of Hungary and kneeling down to the head of the graves, and depositing the pious tribute of green and cypress upon them; and, after a short prayer, rising with clenched fists and gnashing teeth, and then stealing away tearless! and silent as they came,--stealing away, because the bloodbounds of my country's murder lurks from every corner on that night, and on this day, and leads to prison those who dare to show a pious remembrance to the beloved. To-day, a smile on the lips of a Magyar is taken for a crime of defiance to tyranny; and a tear in his eye is equivalent to a revolt. And yet I have seen, with the eye of my home-wandering soul, thousands performing the work of patriotic piety.