Russia, the murder of Rome by France.[1] If he should now speak on this matter, it would be that he has some right to speak; and if we should give ear to him, it would be that we have some reason. Not from his mouth of gold need we fear to receive a message that would bid us cast out the devils of Ottoman misrule by the Muscovite Beelzebub, the prince of the devils of despotism. There are yet men who have a right—though, alas, there may now be no nation which can claim it—to speak without rebuke words of justice and of mercy, to be heard without reminder or appeal. But not of these, unhappily and shamefully for us all, is the first living writer of England. The best comfort we can take in this evil case is to remember that the same charge cannot be
- ↑ Witness to all time, for one singly sufficient instance among ten thousand, these words of most bitter and imperishable sweetness:—
Et ces deux sœurs, hélas! nos mères toutes deux,
Rome qu'en pleurs je nomme,
Et la France sur qui, raffinement hideux,
Coule le sang de Rome!
Les Châtiments, v. 10. (Jersey, Jan. 1853.)
The villanous enterprise which replaced Pius IX. on the seat of Alexander VI. might surely, one would think, if anything could on earth, have provoked some indignant word of protest from the great Protestant historian who has inherited as by a right diviner than that of kings so much of the eloquence and the humour, the principles and the passions, of Knox; but I have never heard that he found in the trumpet of his prophecy one note of inherited indignation to sound against the violator of all national and human right
Qui, pour la mettre en croix, livra, sbire cruel,
Rome républicaine à Rome catholique.
Ibid. vi. 11.
