with the garden, dial, setting sun, trusty steward, and well-spoken visitor all duly arranged in his mind's eye. The same speaker finely says, with a view to enlist Padilla in the leadership of the impatient Commons, as the only man in whom the conditions of such leadership are to be found,
He who would direct
A people in its rising, must be calm
As death is, yet respond to every pulse
Of passion'd millions,—as yon slender moon
That scarce commends the modest light it sheds
Through sunset's glory to she gazer's sense,
In all its changes, in eclipse, in storm,
Enthroned in azure, or enriching clouds
That, in their wildest hurry, catch its softness,
Will sway the impulsive ocean, he must rule
By strength allied to weakness, yet supreme,
Men's heaving soul, and bid it ebb and flow
In sorrow, passion, glory, as he mourns,
Struggles, or triumphs.
Padilla fondly pictures his noble boy scaling the mountain heights "with step airy and true," amid crumbling fragments that broke to dust beneath each footstep, till he trod
The glassy summit, never touoh'd till then
Save by the bolt that splintered it, serene
As if a wing, too fine for mortal sight,
Upbore him, while slant sunbeams graced is brow
With diadem of light.
Plied by appeals to take up the cause of the people, and startled by strange revelations of popular suffering and courtly tyranny, Padilla thus expresses the emotions within which constrain him to compliance with the summons without:
A new world
Of strange oppressions startles me, as shapes
Of dim humanity, that clustering hung
Alone the dusky ridges of the West,
Struck Spain's great Admiral[1] with awe of natures
From Time's beginning passion's with desires
He had no line to fathom.
- ↑ This is not the only allusion to Columbus in "The Castillan," Queen Joanna dreamily recals the glorious time when he and his achievements were the theme of every circle:The veteran Mondeiar, again, speaks of the "age-freighted hours" in which he shared
"Last in vivid speech
Ibid of august Columbus and the birds
Of dazzling colours that he brought from realms
Far westward, till her fancy seem'd to ache
With its own splendour, and, worn out, she slept
The gentle steep of childhood; whence, alas!
She woke still more estranged."—Act IV. Sc. 1."Columbus' watch upon the dismal sea,
While the low murmurs of despair were hush'd
To dull submission by the solemn light
Of the great Captain's eye, as from the helm
It beamed composure, till the world they sought
Dawn;d in its flashes ere the headland broke
The gloom to common vision,"—Act II. Sc. 1.
