Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/119

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

( 109 )

¬and mortified ambition might have been un- safely left at the head of a numerous and power- ful people, even if his original dispositions had been like those of other men. — Animals, how- ever large and powerful, if not by nature feroci- ous, may be handled as if they were our children, and are daily conducted with safety through our most populous cities, but when cruelly goaded and roused up almost to madness, they destroy everv thins: in their course, and there is then no safety but in their deaths. — It was nevertheless a most difficult matter for decision, and in a case where such imminent dangers were on either side impending, it would be most unfair in weighing them, to measure them by the events I am to relate; but it is impossible to be the historian of Armata in such a crisis of her affairs without expressing the utmost admiration of the character of her people. ¬" When from her mistaken counsels, she was so deeply involved at last, as to have no safe retreat from the course she had taken, she then ¬rose ¬