thing there must be in those south-eastern populations of Europe which has power to excite sympathy and pity where they never were enkindled before.[1] Nations and hosts enough of gallant and righteous and blameless men during the justly honoured length of Mr. Carlyle's lifetime have fought and suffered for the right; have given all that man could give for it, dared all that man could dare, done all that man could do, borne all that man could suffer. Yet he who has now so many words and so loud to speak on behalf of Bulgaria had never a word of help, had never a word but of scorn, for Paris or for Hungary or for Poland; for Italy he never had a word. That nation or that province, were it never so abject or so wretched, should be proud for once and happy, which has kindled in the spirit of a man so famous and so strangely strong of heart its one solitary spark of impersonal compassion; if
- ↑ I cannot help remarking for yet another example that it is at least amusing to find, as on December 4th in Birmingham, (for the first time, so to speak, of his appearance in such a part on any boards) John Bright applauding the policy of Richard Plantagenet and crusaders in general with all the incomparable vigour of his tongue. 'Perish Savoy' by all means, but long live Bulgaria! There is at last perceptible one singular and solitary bond of sympathy or union between the two living Englishmen of high genius and noble character—our greatest speaker and our greatest writer (of whom, by the way, the latter has ere now, in his abhorrence of all talk, proposed in the interests of genuine work and sound philanthropy to cut out at birth all the tongues of some 'one blessed generation')—whose else widely divergent views of national policy with regard to all questions of alliance or fellow-feeling with other nations must be, to speak out the pure plain truth, equally and otherwise incomparably detestable to those in whose political creed I put my only faith and hope on any point of national honour or international action.
