hideously inconsistent. False, false, false, as hell! “No love, no love!” she had cried in the bitterness of her heart. “I hate them! I hate all men!”
Oh, what a wreath of bitter, bitter scorn sate on Beppo’s usually inexpressive lips, as he recalled the words!
All thought of the conscription seemed to have gone far, far away into the background, as if it appertained to some distant matter; but still his mind would go over and over again the scene of that last night; and still the tender feelings which, despite his reason, would fill his eyes with tears at the thoughts of it, were alternated with the hot fit of burning rage and shame, and scathing jealousy, as he recalled those other memories of the morning.
And so passed the hours, till the morning Ave Maria from the tower of the neighbouring church of Santa Lucia recalled him to the necessity of reporting himself at home, and commencing with his father and brother the morning’s task.
THE ROUSING OF THE NATIONS.
We are within a few months of fifty years from the date of the grand consultation of Monarchs and States, out of which grew the Treaties of 1815; and we find ourselves invited to share in another consultation of the same kind, in order to the formation of a new set of Treaties, and a fresh division of the territory of Europe. From whatever point of view such an incident is regarded, it is one of extreme seriousness; and to be living in a time which admits of such a proposal is either a great blessing or a great curse. It is this last truth which is uppermost in my mind in beginning to speak of the French Emperor’s proposal of a Congress; and it is of this that I am about to speak. The Congress had been so generally discussed within a week of its being proposed that there is nothing fresh to be said here; and before what I now write will be read new circumstances will certainly have arisen, and it is even possible that the question of Congress or no Congress may be formally settled. I therefore leave that speculation on one side, and look in the direction in which so many eyes are turned,—that of observation of the state of mind of the peoples and the rulers of those countries which are animated or perplexed by hope or fear of change.
There is no question of the benefit and blessing of a thorough rousing of the spirit of a people in any case of self-defence. The holiness of a war of defence against invasion is nowhere denied: and the fervid glow of conscience and the keen joy of sympathy which sustain the spirits of patriotic men and women in times of sincere political revolution, mark the crisis as one of great dignity and charm, and the period as one in which it is a privilege to live. Such a time is the present, to not one but several of the nations of the world: and the most interesting point in the grand procession of phenomena now on its march is the expression of countenance of the persons and groups which compose it. From that expression we must derive whatever we can know of how far each people and each ruler is prepared to use the opportunity of the hour.
France claims to be the leading and guiding Power of Europe,—if not of the world. How is France faring in this crisis?
On the whole, surely not well. The opportunity of the last ten years might have been used for repairing the evils of a baulked revolution, and of the ignoble government which had preceded and caused it. When the agricultural interest was sinking in a slough of poverty; when the population of the country was stationary or declining; when peace and industrial prosperity were demanded by all the symptoms of the suffering body politic,—the contrary treatment was tried first. The Emperor who now proposes to settle all the quarrels of Europe in his own capital has made four wars quite spontaneously in ten years. He revived the quarrel about the Holy Places; and went into the Crimean war,—breaking it off before it was finished, against the will of his allies, and made his own private and special friendship with Russia on that ground, immediately after. He went to war with Austria, of his own will and pleasure, on behalf of Italy,—breaking that off, also, before it was finished, and making a special friendship of his own with the Pope, on the ground of having done so before Rome was swallowed up. As for the Italians,—he broke his promise of liberating Italy from sea to sea: he retained for Austria one province, and for the Pope another, by menace of war: he laid hands on Nice and Savoy, and, in yet more flagrant defiance of treaties, on portions of neutral territory, by which Switzerland is laid open to intrusion in the way from which it was supposed to be protected by the treaties which the French Emperor now holds up to the world as worn-out instruments.
Here are two wars: others have been threatened in Europe from year to year, and almost from month to month; and two have been undertaken in other continents: in Cochin China in the far East, and Mexico in the West, besides some smaller quarrelsome proceedings in half-a-dozen other places—on divers coasts and in various seas.
How far the French people generally ever approved of any one of these wars, and breaches of promises, and violations of treaties, the world does not and cannot know, for the plain reason that the French people themselves do not know. Their self-styled champion of peoples and leader of civilisation and progress does not permit the citizens to confer, to speak, to print, to be really represented in what is called their Chamber, or to know and understand anything of public affairs that he can keep from them. He has given them something else instead—employment of the trades of Paris, for which the nation pays; and paternal management of their affairs, social, domestic, and personal, which, saving them thought and trouble, has left them helpless and dependent; and free-trade, as far as they would accept it, which has been a true and unmixed blessing to them through their industry. After ten years so spent, what is the result which he has to show in support of