Jefferson, and of Henry, countless dusky legions rushing to his rescue,—the clear eye of the other showed him forty millions pouring down upon his less than a hundred braves, to avenge the death of Canby; and yet he slew him. John Brown is a hero, his name is a legend, his tomb a shrine; but where are thy wretched bones slung away, poor Jack? Hadst thou been fair, and dwelt in Lacedæmon, in Xerxes’ days, the name of Leonidas shone not now in solitary glory adown the ages; wert thou living now, and of sable hue, thou mightest be sitting at the desk of Calhoun. Alas! alas! that thou shouldst have been of neutral shade; for how couldst thou be a man and a brother, being only copper-colored? But leaving these knotty points of ethical casuistry to the philanthropists, I reiterate that I think that the picture I have drawn of certain aspects of slavery, as it existed in Virginia, reveals its fatal weakness. That weakness consisted in the fact that it realized the ideal set forth in Victor Hugo’s “Les Miserables.” That eloquent work of the erratic French dreamer is one long and passionate protest against the sorrows and sufferings of the poor. In those sorrows and sufferings he finds the source of all the crimes that dishonor humanity. How, as things existed with us, poverty sufficiently grinding to produce crime was actually unknown; so that our little world was just the world that he sighs for. Victor Hugo plumes himself, I believe, upon never having learned the gibberish that the English call their language. Therefore, as I do not design having this work translated into the various modern languages (why should I, forsooth, since by the time your day rolls round the aforesaid gibberish will be the only tongue spoken by mankind?) he will never have the pain of seeing himself ranked among the upholders of slavery. Whatever he might say, however, it is very clear that no state of things heretofore existing has so well fulfilled the conditions of his ideal of society. It is no fault of mine if his ideal be absurd.[3] For I fear me much this is no ideal world we live in.