so decided, even in a Kansas newspaper. But Lyon knew the inefficiency of half-way measures, and the moral degradation they inevitably entail upon the community so weak or so deluded as to adopt them. The hue and cry of abolitionism did not disturb him; he was not afraid of names. Conservatism that sat in state at Washington, and pulled the wires all over the country,--a tremendous power, none the less fearful in that it was only a galvanized one,--was a dead letter to him, its dignity departed with the age that had demanded it. Conservatism would have resented no impositions, established no new landmarks, asserted no independence; would carry its mails on horseback, creep over the ocean in schooners, fight by sea in piked brigantines, and by land with spear and battle-axe; it would have emancipated no slaves in Great Britain and France, and no serfs in Russia. But if freedom means anything, it means _Progress_,--liberty to advance, never to retrograde. 'Nothing in the world will ever go backward,' said the old lizard to Heine. All the authority of a new Areopagus could never sanction that; and yet this liberty the South claims, nay, has already acted upon, so that the world may see the result of the experiment, and against its continuance Lyon protests. In the long silent years of preparation for the fray he has nursed strange thoughts on the ultimate destiny of man. He has seen in dreams, prophetic of a mighty accomplishment, his country growing great, and vigorous, and powerful, extending to struggling humanity everywhere the protection of her friendship, building up noble institutions, encouraging science and the useful arts, and leading the van in the world's great millennial march; and this not through any miraculous interposition of Providence, but by means of an exalted intelligence and the power of thought stimulating to action, and that of the noblest kind.