"One man, of men the meanest
too,"--for such the First Consul must needs appear to the moralist's
eye,--was
Raised up to sway the world--to do, undo;
With mighty nations for his underlings.
And history herself seemed vulgarized by the repetition of her
ancient tales of war and overthrow on a scale of such apparent
magnitude, but with no glamour of distance to hide the baseness of
the agencies by which the destinies of Europe were shaped anew. This
was an occasion that tried the hearts of men; it was not easy to
remain through all those years at once undazzled and untempted, and
never in the blackest hour to despair of human virtue.
In his tract on _The Convention of Cintra_, 1808, Wordsworth has
given the fullest expression to this undaunted temper:--
"Oppression, its own blind and predestined enemy, has poured
this of blessedness upon Spain--that the enormity of the outrages
of which she has been the victim has created an object of love
and of hatred, of apprehensions and of wishes, adequate (if
that be possible) to the utmost demands of the human spirit.
The heart that serves in this cause, if it languish, must
languish from its own constitutional weakness, and not through
want of nourishment from without.
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