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pel, and hold it ever in their faces like a mirror of diamond, till it dazzle and pierce their misty eyeballs? maintaining it the honor of its absolute sufficiency and supremacy inviolable; for if the Scripture be for reformation, and antiquity to boot, it is but an advantage to the dozen, it is no winning cast; and though antiquity be against it, while the Scriptures be for it, the cause is as good as ought to be wished, antiquity itself sitting judge.

LIX.-ATTACK ON ANTWERP.

WINDHAM.

WHAT did the military opinions amount to? Precisely nothing; and how could it be otherwise, seeing that the officers had no data whereon to found their opinions? Ministers, indeed, tell us that they had information from their spies, that there were so many men at Antwerp-so many at Lillo-and so many at Bergen-op-Zoom; but it must be recollected that it is the interest of spies to smooth the difficulties that lie in the way of their employers: and, independently of this consideration, how is it possible for spies to form an estimate of the amount of the small detachments which are scattered all over the country? It must also be recollected that a great part of the population of the country consists of men who have been accustomed to the use of arms; aye, sir, and who have seen fire too. The very sweepings of such a country would have been sufficient for the defence of Antwerp. But were ministers so very ignorant, as not to know that there are between twenty and thirty fortified towns, within a few days' march of Antwerp, and that each of these towns has its garrison? Nay, it is now known, that troops were sent even from Paris to Antwerp, before our devoted army reached the point where its difficulties were to commence. Did ministers think that troops of the enemy were immovable? The insane calculations of these dreamers remind me of a countryman, who, in directing a traveller across the Downs, told him, that he must travel three or four miles, and when he came to a flock of sheep he must turn to the right. But how if the sheep had changed their position before he got there? What would gentlemen say of Bonaparte, if, on receiving intelligence from his spies that

there were only seven or eight thousand troops near Portsmouth, he was to send an expedition of forty thousand men to take the place? would they not say that he was insane?

The noble lord, however, says, that it was intended to take Antwerp by a coup-de-main. What must the enemy, sir, think of us, when they hear this stated? with what contempt and ridicule must they not treat us when they learn that the projector of this mighty expedition is acquainted with the terms of military science, without having the slightest idea of the meaning of these terms? Good God, sir, talk of coup-de-main with forty thousand men, and thirty-three sail of the line! Gentlemen might as well talk of coup-demain in the Court of Chancery.

LX-WHAT IS THE FRENCH REVOLUTION?

LAMARTINE.

WHAT, then, is the French Revolution? Is it, as the adorers of the past say, a great sedition of a nation disturbed for no reason, and destroying in their insensate convulsions, their church, their monarchy, their classes, their institutions, their nationality, and even rending the map of Europe? No! the Revolution has not been a miserable sedition of France; for a sedition subsides as it rises, and leaves nothing but corpses and ruins behind it. The Revolution has left scaffolds and ruins, it is true; therein is its remorse; but it has also left a doctrine; it has left a spirit which will be enduring and perpetual so long as human reason shall exist.

We are not inspired by the spirit of faction! No factious idea enters our thoughts. We do not wish to compose a faction-we compose opinion, for it is nobler, stronger, and more invincible. Shall we have, in our first struggles, violence, oppression and death? No, gentlemen! let us give thanks to our fathers-it shall be liberty which they have bequeathed to us, liberty which now has its own arms, its pacific arms, to develop itself without anger and excess. Therefore shall we triumph-be sure of it! and if you ask what is the moral force that shall bend the government beneath the will of the nation, I will answer you; it is the sovereignty of ideas, the royalty of mind, the Republic, the

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true Republic of intelligence, in one word-opinion-that modern power whose very name was unknown to antiquity. Gentlemen, public opinion was born on the very day when Guttenberg, who has been styled the artificer of a new world, invented, by printing, the multiplication and indefinite communication of thought and human reason. This incomprehensible power of opinion needs not for its sway either the brand of vengeance, the sword of justice, or the scaffold of terror. It holds in its hands the equilibrium between ideas and institutions, the balance of the human mind. In one of the scales of this balance-understand it well-will be for a long time placed, mental superstitions, prejudices selfstyled useful, the divine right of kings, distinctions of right among classes, international animosities, the spirit of conquest, the venal alliance of church and state, the censorship of thought, the silence of tribunes, and the ignorance and systematic degradation of the masses. In the other scale, we ourselves, gentlemen, will place the lightest and most impalpable thing of all that God has created-light, a little of that light which the French Revolution evoked at the close of the last century, from a volcano, doubtless, but from a volcano of truth.

LXI-TRUE USE OF WEALTH.

ALISON.

GENTLEMEN, within two hours' journey from Glasgow are to be found combined,

"Whate'er Lorrain hath touched with softening hue,

Or savage Rosa dashed, or learned Poussin drew."

The wealth is here, the enterprise is here, the materials are here; nothing is wanting but the hand of genius to cast these precious elements into the mould of beauty-the lofty spirit, the high aspirations which, aiming at greatness, never fail to attain it. Are we to be told that we cannot do these things; that, like the Russians, we can imitate but cannot conceive? It is not in the nation of Smith and of Watt,-it is not in the land of Burns and Scott,—it is not in the country of Shakspeare and Milton,-it is not in the empire of Reynolds and Wren, that we can give any weight to that argument

Nor is it easy to believe that the same genius which has drawn in enchanting colors the lights and shadows of Scottish life, might not, if otherwise directed, have depicted, with equal felicity, the lights and shadows of Scottish scenery.

But we are not only moral and intellectual, we are active agents. We long after gratification-we, thirst for enjoyment; and the experienced observer of man will not despise the subsidiary, but still important aid to be derived in the great work of moral elevation, from a due direction of the active propensities. And he is not the least friend to his species, who, in an age peculiarly vehement in desire, discovers gratifications which do not corrupt-enjoyments which do not degrade. But if this is true of enjoyments simply innocent, what shall we say of those which refine, which not only do not lead to vice, but exalt to virtue ?—which open to the peasant, equally with the prince, that pure gratification which arises to all alike from the contemplation of the grand and beautiful in Art and Nature? We have now reached the point where such an election can no longer be delayed. Our wealth is so great, it has come on us so suddenly, it will corrupt if it does not refine; if not directed to the arts which raised Athens to immortality, it will sink us to those which hurled Babylon to perdition.

LXII.-YIELDING TO PUBLIC OPINION.

ALISON.

It is always in resisting, never by yielding to public opinion, that these great master-spirits exert their power. The conqueror, indeed, who is to act by the present arms of men; the statesman who is to sway by present measures the agitated masses of society, have need of general support. Napoleon said truly that he was so long successful, because he always marched with the opinions of five millions of men. But the great intellects which are destined to give a permanent change to thought-which are destined to act generally, not upon the present but the next generation—are almost invariably in direct opposition to general opinion. In truth, it is the resistance of a powerful mind to the flood of error by which it is surrounded, which, like the compression that

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elicits the power of steam, creates the moving power which alters the moral destiny of mankind.

Was it by yielding to public opinion that Bacon emancipated mankind from the fetters of the Aristotelian philosophy? Was it by yielding to the Ptolemaic cycles that Copernicus unfolded the true mechanism of the heavens? Was it by yielding to the dogmas of the Church that Galileo established the earth's motions? Was it by yielding to the Romish corruptions that Luther established the Reformation? Was it by concession that Latimer and Ridley "lighted a flame which, by the grace of God, shall never be extinguished?" Was it by conceding to the long-established system of commercial restriction, that Smith unfolded the truths of the wealth of nations?—or by chiming in with the deluge of infidelity and democracy, with which he was surrounded, that Burke arrested the devastation of the French Revolution? What were the eloquence of Pitt, the arms of Nelson and Wellington, but the ministers of those principles which, in opposition to general opinion, he struck out at once, and with a giant's arm? "Genius creates by a single conception; in a single principle, opening, as it were, on a sudden to genius, a great and new system of things is discovered. The statuary conceives a statue at once, which is afterwards slowly executed by the hands of many.”

LXIII.-DECLINE OF THE CELTIC RACE.

MICHELET.

IRELAND! Poor first-born of the Celtic race! So far from France, yet its sister, whom it cannot succor across the waves! The Isle of Saints-the Emerald Isle-so fruitful in men, so bright in genius!-the country of Berkeley and Toland, of Moore and O'Connell !-the land of bright thoughts and the rapid sword, which preserves, amidst the old age of this world, its poetic inspiration. Let the English smile when, passing some hovel in their towns, they hear the Irish widow chant the coronach for her husband. Weep! mournful country; and let France too weep, for degradation which she cannot prevent-calamities which she cannot avert! In vain have four hundred thousand Irishmen perished in the