Page:The Barbarism of Slavery.djvu/47

 is where a scene of transcendent virtue is described as sculptured in “visible speech" on the long gallery which led to the Tleavenly Gate. The poet felt the inspiration of the scene, and placed it on the way-side, where it could charm and encourage. This was natural, Nobody can look upon virtue and justice, if it be only in images and pictures, without feeling a kindred sentiment. Nobody can be surrounded by vice and wrong, by violence and brutality, if it be only in images and pictures, without coming under their degrading influence. Nobody can live with the one without advantage; nobody can live with the other without loss. Who could pass his life in the secret chamber where are gathered the impure relics of Pompeii, without becoming indifferent to loathsome things? But if these loathsome things are not merely sculptured and painted, if they exist in living reality — if they enact their hideous capers in Iife, as in the criminal pretensions of Slavery — while the lash plays and the blood spirts — while women are whipped and children are sold — while marriage is polluted and annulled — while the parental tie is rudely torn — while honest gains are filched or robbed — while the soul itself is shut down in all the darkness of ignorance, and while God himself is defied in the pretension that man can have property in his fellow-man; if all these things are present, not merely in images and pictures, but in reality, their influence on character must be incalculable.

It is according to irresistible law that men are fashioned by what is about them, whether climate, scenery, life or institutions. Like produces like, and this ancient proverb is verified always. Look at the miner, delving low down in darkness, and the mountaineer, ranging on airy heights, and you will see a contrast in character, and even in personal form. The difference between a coward and a hero may be traced in the atmosphere which each has breathed; and how much more in the institutions under which each has been reared. If institutions generous and just ripen souls also generous and just, then other institutions must exhibit their influence also. Violence, brutality, injustice, barbarism, must be reproduced in the lives of all who live within their fatal sphere. The meat that is eaten by man enters into and becomes a part of his body; the madder which is eaten by a dog changes his bones to red; and the Slavery on which men live, in all its five-fold foulness, must become a part