207
CHAPTER XVI.
Return to her own country now lay immediately before Margaret. In the land of her adoption the struggle for freedom had failed, and no human fore-sight could have predicted the period of its renewal. Europe had cried out, like the sluggard on his bed: "You have waked me too soon; I must slumber again."
Margaret's delight in the new beauties and resources unfolded to her in various European countries, and especially in Italy, had-made the thought of this return unwelcome to her. But now that free thought had become contraband in the beautiful land, where should she carry her high-hearted hopes, if not westward, with the tide of the true empire that shall grow out of man's conquest of his own brute passions?
This holy westward way, found of Columbus,
