(C. 4.) Andres and his master. The manner in which Don Quixote redressed this wrong, is a picture of the true revolutionary passion in its first honest state, while it is yet only a bewilderment of the understanding. You have a benevolence limitless in its prayers, which are in fact aspirations towards omnipotence; but between it and beneficence the bridge of judgment that is, of measurement of personal power intervenes, and must be passed. Otherwise you will be bruised by the leap into the chasm, or be drowned in the revolutionary river, and drag others with you to the same fate.
(C. 4.) Merchants of Toledo.
When they were come so near as to be seen and heard, Don Quixote raised his voice, and with arrogant air cried out: "Let the whole world stand; if the whole world does not confess that there is not in the whole world a damsel more beautiful than," &c.
Now mark the presumption which follows the self-complacency of the last act! That was an honest attempt to redress a real wrong; this is an arbitrary determination to enforce a Brissotine or Rousseau's ideal on all his fellow creatures.
Let the whole world stand!
'If there had been any experience in proof of the excellence of our code, where would be our superiority in this enlightened age?'
"No! the business is that without seeing her, you believe, confess, affirm, swear, and maintain it; and if not, I challenge you all to battle." [4]
Next see the persecution and fury excited by opposition however moderate! The only words listened to are those, that without their context and their conditionals, and transformed into positive assertions, might give some shadow of excuse for the violence shown! This rich story ends, to the compassion of the men in their senses, in a sound rib-roasting of the idealist by the muleteer, the mob. And happy for thee, poor knight! that the mob were against thee! For had they been with thee, by the change of the moon and of them, thy head would have been off.
(C. 5.) first part The idealist recollects the causes that had been accessary to the reverse and attempts to remove them too late. He is beaten and disgraced.
(C. 6.) This chapter on Don Quixote's library proves that the author did not wish to destroy the romances, but to cause them to be read as romances that is, for their merits as poetry.
(C. 7.) Among other things, Don Quixote told him, he should dispose himself to go with him willingly; for some time or other such an adventure might present, that an island might be won, in the turn of a hand, and he be left governor thereof.
At length the promises of the imaginative reason begin to act on the plump, sensual, honest common sense accomplice, but unhappily not in the same person, and without the