With equal pain have I witnessed, having traversed Spain at the period, the recent success of French intrigue and the spectacle of renewed subserviency. The wedding-ring may replace the sword, but the instrument, because less bloody, is not less fatal to Liberty; and the words of Byron, at the close of the first Canto of Childe Harold, become invested with prophetic and appalling truthfulness:—
Not all the blood at Talavera shed,
Not all the marvels of Barosa’s fight,
Not Albuera lavish of the dead,
Have won for Spain her well asserted right.
When shall her Olive-Branch be free from blight?
When shall she breathe her from the blushing toil?
How many a doubtful day shall sink in night,
Ere the Frank robber turn him from his spoil,
And Freedom’s stranger-tree grow native of the soil!