In Cervantes freedom gained a champion whose efforts entitle him to grateful mention, on this threshold of our inquiry. Taught in the school of slavery, he knew how to commiserate the slave. The unhappy condition of his fellow-Christians in chains was ever uppermost in his mind. He lost no opportunity of arousing his countrymen to attempts for their emancipation, and for the overthrow of the "peculiar institution"--pardon this returning phrase!--under which they groaned. He became in Spain what, in our day and country, is sometimes called an "Anti-Slavery Agitator"--not by public meetings and addresses, but, according to the genius of the age, mainly through the instrumentality of the theatre. Not from the platform, but from the stage, did this liberated slave speak to the world. In a drama, entitled _El Trato de Argel_, or Life in Algiers,--which, though not composed according to the rules of art, yet found much favor, probably from its subject,--he pictured, shortly after his return to Spain, the manifold humiliations, pains, and torments of slavery. This was followed by two others in the same spirit--_La Gran Sultana Dona Cattalina de Oviedo_, The Great Sultana the Lady Cattalina of Oviedo; and _Los Banos de Argel_, The Galleys of Algiers. The last act of the latter closes with the statement, calculated to enlist the sympathies of an audience, that this play "is not drawn from the imagination, but was born far from the regions of fiction, in the very heart of truth." Not content with this appeal through the theatre, Cervantes, with constant zeal, takes up the same theme, in the tale of the Captive, in Don Quixote, as we have already seen, and also in that of _El Liberal Amante_, The Liberal Lover, and in some parts of _La Espanola Inglesa_, The English Spanishwoman. All these may be regarded, not merely as literary labors, but as charitable endeavors in behalf of human freedom. [Illustration]