History is like a prison-house, of which Time is the only jailer who can reveal the secrets. And Father Time is slow to speak. Sometimes he is strangely dumb concerning events of deep importance, sometimes idly garrulous about small matters. When now and then he reveals some long-kept secret, we refuse to believe him; we cannot credit that such things ever happened on this planet of ours, so respectable in its civilized humanity, so tenderly zealous for the welfare and freedom of its remotest members. But this same humanity is a riddle to which our proudest philosophers have not yet found the clew. It moves mountains to deliver an oppressed mouse, and sits mute and apathetic while a nation of weak brothers is being hunted to death by a nation of strong ones in the midst of its universal brotherhood; seeing the most sacred principles and highest interests of the world attacked and imperilled, and the earth shaken with throes and rendings that will bring forth either life or death, exactly as humanity shall decide, and yet not moving a finger either way. Then, when the storm is over and it beholds the wreck caused by its own apathy or stupidity, it fills the world with an “agony of lamentation,” gnashes its teeth, and protests that it slept, and knew not that these things were being done in its name. Sometimes the funeral knell of the victims goes on echoing like a distant thunder-tone for a whole generation, and is scarcely heeded, until at last some watcher hearkens, and wakes us up, and, lo! we find that a tragedy has been enacted at our door, and the victim has been crying out piteously for help while we slumbered. History is full of these slumberings and awakenings. What an awakening for France was that when, after the lapse of two generations, the jailer struck the broken stones of the Temple, and gave them a voice to tell their story, bidding all the world attend!