In this next passage as to the same subject, rising above Mr. Adams to the high frankness which the facts demand, he says, "The truth is that an irrepressible social conflict was at hand, and that both sides were as honorable as were both sides during the American Revolution, or during the civil wars of England."[8] How just to north and south each, and how fraternally compassionate towards the south is this: "Solemn enough to the uninvaded north, the war meant more than northern imagination has yet realized to those southern States into whose heart its horrors were slowly, surely carried. Such a time was too intense for much expression; it was a moment rather for heroic action; and in south and north alike it found armies of heroes. Of these there are few more stirring records than a simple ballad made by Dr. Ticknor, of Georgia, concerning a confederate soldier."[9] And then he quotes "Little Giffen" in full. Professor Wendell reaches a still greater height when he decorates the Tyrtæus of the Confederate States and the supereminent anti-slavery lyricist of the north with equal homage and admiration. He says: "The civil war brought forth no lines more fervent [than the concluding thirty-six of Timrod's 'The Cotton Boll,' which are set out], and few whose fervor rises to such lyric height. In the days of conflict, north regarded south, and south north, as the incarnation of evil. Time, however, has begun its healing work; at last our country begins to understand itself better than ever before; and as our new patriotism strengthens, we cannot prize too highly such verses as Whittier's, honestly phrasing noble northern sentiment, or as Timrod's, who with equal honesty phrased the noble sentiment of the south. A literature which in the same years could produce work so utterly antagonistic in superficial sentiment, and yet so harmonious in their common sincerity and loftiness of feeling, is a literature from which riches may come."[10]