* * * * *

Students of the anti-slavery struggle should not forget, however, how much the success of that struggle was due to Mrs. Maria Weston Chapman, whose death occurred at Weymouth, Mass., on July 12.  She was not only a magna pars of the struggle, but one of the most remarkable women of our time.  Mrs. Maria Child used to relate how Mrs. Chapman, clad in the height of fashion of that day, came into the first anti-slavery fair, an entire stranger to every one present.  “She looked around over the few tables, scantily supplied, and stopped by some faded artificial flowers.  The poor commodity only indicated the utter poverty of means to carry on the work.  We thought her a spy, or maybe she was a slave-holder.”  From that time she entered heartily into the work.  She became the life of the Female Anti-slavery Society in Boston, she spoke often in public; her pen was never idle when it could advance the cause of equal rights and freedom.

Mr. Lowell, in his rhymed letter, descriptive of an anti-slavery bazaar at Faneuil Hall, and the celebrities of the cause there assembled, drew the portrait of this gifted woman with his usual felicitous touch:—­

  “There was Maria Chapman, too,
  With her swift eyes of clear steel-blue,
  The coiled up mainspring of the Fair,
  Originating everywhere
  The expansive force, without a sound,
  That whirls a hundred wheels around;
  Herself meanwhile as calm and still
  As the bare crown of Prospect Hill;
  A noble woman, brave and apt,
  Cumaea’s sybil not more rapt,
  Who might, with those fair tresses shorn,
  ‘The Maid of Orlean’ casque have worn;
  Herself the Joan of our Arc,
  For every shaft a shining mark.”

* * * * *

It is one thing to be a good ship-builder for the government, and quite another thing to be in favor with the Secretary of the Navy, at Washington.  This is the lesson, and the only lesson, which can be deduced from the two dispatches which have been transmitted over the country, namely:  that the “Dolphin” has been rejected, and that John Roach, her builder, has failed.

The case has its value as a warning to American ship-builders.  They are given to understand that the closest compliance with the requisitions of the department in the process of constructing a vessel, and that under the direction of experts, perfectly competent to determine what is good work and what is bad, will avail them nothing unless they are in favor with the Secretary when the vessel is offered for acceptance.  And they are warned that the Department of Justice holds it perfectly legal for the Navy Department to lay upon them such conditions as to construction as must determine the capacity of the vessel for speed, and yet reject the vessel as not fast enough.  They may be fined heavily for not having used their discretion, and yet may have been denied discretion as to the plans used.