But in magnanimous meekness. France, ’tis strange,
Hath brought forth no such souls as we had then.
Perpetual emptiness! unceasing change!
No single volume paramount, no code,
No master-spirit, no determined road;—
But equally a want of Books and Men!”
In the fifth line, “These moralists could act AND comprehend,” we have a beautiful and exact paraphrase of the Romano-Cogitative, which we noticed as characteristic of the Cromwellian age—the union of physical energy with mental power.
It was a remark which we heard made some thirty years ago, by a very observant man, that there was a wonderful identity of expression in the countenances of all the men of the French Revolution, and that the same peculiar expression is to be seen in the faces of the conspirators of the Gunpowder Plot. Subsequent personal observation has confirmed this remark, of which it is a curious and recent corroboration, that the same expression is visible in the countenances of some of the leading Terrorists of the late French Revolution.[[23]] The countenance of “bloody Mary” is an instance of the same peculiar expression.
The old gentleman who made the remark which drew our infantine attention added, (and it was this perhaps which impressed it upon our memory) that there was “blood” written in all their faces.
We cannot improve upon this definition, though in one word, it might also be called a wolfish look—lean, cruel, hungry, grinning.