She has been more than my better half ever since. There never passes a day on which I am not taunted with my plucking.
THE REVOLUTIONS IN EUROPE
When an Eastern sage was desired by his sultan to inscribe on a ring the sentiment which, amidst the perpetual change of human affairs, was most descriptive of their real tendency, he engraved on it the words:—"And this, too, shall pass away." It is impossible to imagine a thought more truly and universally applicable to human affairs than that expressed in these memorable words, or more descriptive of that perpetual oscillation from good to evil, and from evil to good, which from the beginning of the world has been the invariable characteristic of the annals of man, and so evidently flows from the strange mixture of noble and generous with base and selfish inclinations, which is constantly found in the children of Adam.
"And this, too, shall pass away." The moral whirlwind which has lately swept over the states of Europe, and shaken all the kingdoms to their foundations, will subside. Old habits will in the end return—old affections revive—old desires resume their sway—old necessities become imperious. Institutions may be modified—dynasties overturned—forms of government altered—monarchs sent into exile; but the human heart remains, and will for ever remain, the same. That foundation being unaltered, the social necessities of men will in the end compel them to the old establishment of authority, under names perhaps new. Old power will revive, old rule be established, old authority be confirmed. The great body of men will still remain hewers of wood and drawers of water; because Nature never intended them for any other destination, and she has rendered them incapable of discharging the duties of any other station. Respectable, useful, and virtuous, when confined to it, they become pernicious and ridiculous when for a time withdrawn from it to be placed in another. Mind will ere long resume its sway over matter, moral over physical strength. Nations may rise in insurrection; they may destroy the existing government; they may establish a democratic or republican institution;—but that will not alter the nature of things; it will not compensate the incapacity for self-government of the great body of mankind; it will not relieve them from the first of human necessities, that of being directed by a few. Under one name or another—that of Decemvirs, a Triumvirate, a Committee of Public Salvation, a Directory, or a Provisional Government, the old authority is speedily evolved, only the more powerful that it has been cradled in violence. It is not the weakness, it is the irresistible strength of a democratic government which is its greatest evil. It is the iron grasp it never fails to lay on the property of others which is its principal danger, the never-failing instrument of its speedy overthrow. Property is soon swept away by it, but liberty is swept away still more quickly. A Cæsar, a Cromwell, a Napoleon, arises like an avatar to stay the wrath of Heaven let loose in the unbridled passions of men; and ages of servitude succeed one terrible and unforgotten period of popular license.
It is the more important to refer to these lasting principles in human affairs at this time that the events which have recently occurred on the Continent seem at first sight to set all former experience and history at defiance. Not only has monarchy been again overthrown, and a republic restored in France by a single urban tumult, but the contagion of the example has spread to other countries, hitherto deemed the stronghold of the conservative principle, and farthest removed from the influence of the revolutionary mania. That Italy, following in the wake of a reforming Pope, should be speedily convulsed by popular fervour, was anticipated, and might easily be understood. That Lombardy and Venice, long impatient of the Tramontane yoke, should seize the first opportunity to cast it off, was what every person acquainted with the feelings of the people in those beautiful provinces has long expected. That Prussia, the most highly educated state in Europe, and which has long murmured at the delay in conceding the popular institutions promised during the struggle with Napoleon in 1813, should make an effort now to obtain them, might be understood. That the Poles, smarting under their recent dismemberment, and mourning their lost nationality, should eagerly grasp at the shadow even of the means of restoring it, was of course to be expected. But that Austria, the most aristocratic monarchy in Europe—that Austria, without either seaports, commercial cities, or manufacturing emporiums, should be seized by the same passions, and that the monarchy which had defeated Napoleon at Aspern, and all but destroyed him at Wagram, should be overturned by an urban tumult, headed by a burgher guard and the beardless students of the university—this indeed surpassed human comprehension.
It not unnaturally induced in superstitious or highly excited minds the belief that the end of the world was approaching, or that an entire new era had opened upon human affairs, to which nothing which had preceded it could furnish any thing like a parallel. According to the temper of their minds, men and women either believed that the dark prophecies of the Revelation were about to be accomplished, and that the great battle of Armageddon was to precede the advent of the Millennium, or that the era of commercial organisation and socialist felicity was approaching, and that all the miseries of mankind were to expire amidst the universal dominion of the people. In the midst of these general hopes and fears, more experienced or practical observers fixed their eyes on the spoliation of Austria by liberalised Piedmont; of Denmark, by revolutionised Prussia; and of Lithuania, by regenerated Poland; and drew the conclusion that human selfishness was the same in all times and ages; that pirates could sail under the red as well as the black flag, and that the fervour of Louis Blanc and Lamartine would terminate in a conflict as fierce, and disasters as wide-spread, as those which followed the visions of Siêyes, and the philanthropy of Robespierre.
What is in a peculiar manner worthy of consideration in the overthrow, in so short a time, of so many of the established governments of Europe, is the facility with which they appear to have been overturned by sudden urban tumult, and the immediate submission of the whole provinces and remainder of the empire, the moment the ruling power in the capital was changed. It was not thus, in former days, either in France or any of the other European monarchies. Paris was often lost and won during the English wars, the contests of the League and the Fronde, but the provinces were not dismayed by the loss of the capital; and, in their fidelity, Charles VII. and Henry V. found the means of changing the scales of fortune, and again wresting it from the arms of rebels or strangers. Charles I. set up his standard at Northampton; and London, from the very outset of the conflict, was in the hands of the Long Parliament; but he found, in the fidelity of the northern and western counties, the means of maintaining for years a gallant conflict, in which victory more than once was on the verge of rendering triumphant the royalist cause. Berlin, during the Seven Years' War, was twice taken by the Russians; but Frederick the Great emerged victorious out of that terrible strife. Vienna, in the time of Maria Theresa, was wrested from her arms by the French and Bavarians; but she threw herself on the fidelity of the Hungarians, and, ere long, the standards of France were driven with disgrace behind the Rhine. The double capture of the same city by Napoleon did not determine the conflict between France and Austria; but a desperate struggle was subsequently maintained, with almost balanced success, at Austerlitz, Aspern, and Wagram. But now a single tumult, in which the loss of life does not equal that of an ordinary skirmish, has overthrown the greatest monarchies. That of Louis Philippe fell before fifty men had been killed in the streets of Paris; that of Prussia sank in a conflict in which one hundred and eighty-seven men fell on the popular side; and an échauffourée, which scarcely would deserve a place in military history, overturned the monarchy of Austria, within sight of the steeples of Aspern, and around the cathedral which had witnessed the victory of John Sobieski and the triumphant entry of Maria Theresa!
It is impossible not to conclude that moral and political causes have here enervated the minds of men, and weakened, to a most ruinous extent, the strength of nations. The depositaries of power have not, in general, shown themselves worthy of the trust which they held. There is no reason to suspect them of personal cowardice; but the moral courage which carries through a crisis, and so often averts danger by venturing to face it, appears to have been generally awanting. Men forgot the words of Napoleon, on occasion of Malet's conspiracy—"The death of a soldier would be the most glorious of all, if that of a magistrate, slain in the faithful discharge of his civil duties, were not still more honourable." Of few in these days can it be said, in the words of the poet,—