’They may conquer us on the morrow!  Might and wrong may prevail, and we may be driven from this field—­but the hour of God’s own vengeance will surely come!

’Ay, if in the vast solitudes of eternal space, if in the heart of the boundless universe, there throbs the being of an awful God, quick to avenge, and sure to punish guilt, then will the man, George of Brunswick, called king, feel in his brain and in his heart the vengeance of the Eternal Jehovah!  A blight will be upon his life—­a withered brain, an accurst intellect; a blight will be upon his children, and on his people.  Great God! how dread the punishment!

’A crowded populace, peopling the dense towns where the man of money thrives, while the labourer starves; want striding among the people in all its forms of terror; an ignorant and God-defying priesthood chuckling over the miseries of millions; a proud and merciless nobility adding wrong to wrong, and heaping insult upon robbery and fraud; royalty corrupt to the very heart; aristocracy rotten to the core; crime and want linked hand in hand, and tempting men to deeds of woe and death—­these are a part of the doom and the retribution that shall come upon the English throne and the English people!’

“This was pronounced with a voice of such power, that its tones might have reached almost to the Briton’s camp, and struck upon the ear of Howe as the prophetic inspiration of one whose keen eye had read from the dark tablets of futurity.

“Looking around upon the officers, he perceived that Washington and Lafayette had half risen from their seats, and were gazing spell-bound at him, as if to drink in every word he uttered.

“Taking advantage of the pervading feeling, he went on:—­

“’Soldiers—­I look around upon your familiar faces with a strange interest!  To-morrow morning we will all go forth to battle—­for need I tell you that your unworthy minister will march with you, invoking God’s aid in the fight?—­we will march forth to battle!  Need I exhort you to fight the good fight, to fight for your homesteads, and for your wives and children?

’My friends, I might urge you to fight, by the galling memories of British wrong!  Walton—­I might tell you of your father butchered in the silence of midnight on the plains of Trenton; I might picture his grey hairs dabbled in blood; I might ring his death-shriek in your ears.  Shelmire—­I might tell you of a mother butchered, and a sister outraged—­the lonely farm-house, the night assault, the roof in flames, the shouts of the troopers, as they despatch their victim, the cries for mercy, the pleadings of innocence for pity.  I might paint this all again, in the terrible colors of the vivid reality, if I thought your courage needed such wild excitement.

’But I know you are strong in the might of the Lord.  You will forth to battle on the morrow with light hearts and determined spirits, though the solemn duty—­the duty of avenging the dead—­may rest heavy on your souls.