No
philosophy can make me above it: no melancholy can depress me so low as
to make me wholly insensible to such an honor.
Why will they not let me remain in obscurity and inaction? Are they
apprehensive, that, if an atom of me remains, the sect has something to
fear? Must I be annihilated, lest, like old John Zisca's, my skin might
be made into a drum, to animate Europe to eternal battle against a
tyranny that threatens to overwhelm all Europe and all the human race?
My Lord, it is a subject of awful meditation. Before this of France,
the annals of all time have not furnished an instance of a _complete_
revolution. That revolution seems to have extended even to the
constitution of the mind of man. It has this of wonderful in it, that it
resembles what Lord Verulam says of the operations of Nature: It was
perfect, not only in its elements and principles, but in all its members
and its organs, from the very beginning. The moral scheme of France
furnishes the only pattern ever known which they who admire will
_instantly_ resemble. It is, indeed, an inexhaustible repertory of one
kind of examples. In my wretched condition, though hardly to be classed
with the living, I am not safe from them. They have tigers to fall upon
animated strength; they have hyenas to prey upon carcasses. The national
menagerie is collected by the first physiologists of the time; and it is
defective in no description of savage nature.
Pages:
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183