In the month of May, 1844, while one evening strolling up Broadway, New York, I saw a crowd making its way into the Minerva Rooms, and, having no pressing engagement, I followed, and was soon in a splendid hall, where some twelve or fifteen hundred persons were seated, and listening to rather a strange-looking man.  The speaker was tall and slim, with long arms, long legs, and a profusion of auburn or reddish hair hanging in ringlets down his shoulders; while a huge beard of the same colour fell upon his breast.  His person was not at all improved by his dress.  The legs of his trousers were shorter than those worn by smaller men:  the sleeves of his coat were small and short, the shirt collar turned down in Byronic style, beard and hair hid his countenance, so that no redeeming feature could be found there; yet there was one redeeming quality about the man—­that was the stream of fervid eloquence which escaped from his lips.  I inquired his name, and was informed that it was Charles C. Burleigh.  Nature has been profuse in showering her gifts upon Mr. Burleigh, but all has been bestowed upon his head and heart.  There is a kind of eloquence which weaves its thread around the hearer, and gradually draws him into its web, fascinating him with its gaze, entangling him as the spider does the fly, until he is fast:  such is the eloquence of C.C.  Burleigh.  As a debater he is unquestionably the first on the Anti-slavery platform.  If he did not speak so fast, he would equal Wendell Phillips; if he did not reason his subject out of existence, he would surpass him.  However, one would have to travel over many miles, and look in the faces of many men, before he would find one who has made more personal sacrifices, or done more to bring about the Emancipation of the American Slaves, than Mr. Charles C. Burleigh.

Whoever the future historian of the Anti-Slavery movement may be, he will not be able to compile a correct history of this great struggle, without consulting the writings of Edmund Quincy, a member of one of the wealthiest, patriotic, and aristocratic families in New England:  the prestige of his name is a passport to all that the heart could wish.  Descended from a family, whose name is connected with all that was glorious in the great American Revolution, the son of one who has again and again represented his native State, in the National Congress, he too, like Wendell Phillips, threw away the pearl of political preferment, and devoted his distinguished talents to the cause of the Slave.  Mr. Quincy is better known in this country as having filled the editorial chair of The Liberator, during the several visits of its Editor to Great Britain.  As a speaker, he does not rank as high as some who are less known; as a writer, he has few equals.  The “Annual Reports” of the American and Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Societies for the past fifteen or twenty years, have emanated from his pen.  When posterity, in digging among the tombs of the friends of mankind, and of universal freedom, shall fail to find there the name of Edmund Quincy, it will be because the engraver failed to do his duty.