Certain it is, let men say what they will, the Pope is the only sovereign power on earth at this moment that stands as the defender of the rights of independent governments, of international law, the equality of sovereign states without regard to size, race, language, or geographical position—the sole champion of those great, eternal, and immutable principles of justice on which depend alike public liberty and individual freedom, the sanctity and inviolability of the family, the peace and order and the very existence of society. If the kings and rulers of this world are with him, or dare utter a feeble whisper to encourage and sustain him, the people are opposed, or cold or indifferent, and pass him by, wagging their heads, saying in a mocking tone, "He trusted in heaven, and let heaven save him."
It were little short of profanity to indicate the contrast between his sublime attitude and the abject and servile attitude of these distinguished countrymen of ours. They but prove themselves slaves to the spirit of the age, and only reflect popular ignorance and passion, and follow the multitude to worship at the shrine of Success, and to trample on the wronged and outraged. He dares arraign the fierce and satanic spirit of the age, to face the enraged multitude, to defy popular opinion or popular passion, to proclaim the truth it condemns, to defend the right it tramples under foot, and uphold the scorned and rejected rights of God, and the inviolability of conscience. It were an insult to truth and justice, to moral greatness and nobility, to dwell on the contrast. His attitude is that of his Master when he trod the wine-press alone, and of the people none were with him. It is grand, it is sublime, beyond the power of mortal man, unless assisted with strength from above. No man, it seems to us, can contemplate his attitude, firm and inflexible, calm and serene, without being filled, if he have any nobility or generosity of soul, or any sense of moral heroism or true manliness in him, with admiration and awe, or feeling that his very attitude proves that he is in the right, and that God is with him. Let our American sympathizers with his traducers and persecutors behold him whom they calumniate, and, if they are men, blush and hang their heads. Shame and confusion should cover their faces!
FLOWERS.
I.
To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell,
To slowly trace the forest's shady scene,
Where things that own not man's dominion dwell,
And mortal foot hath ne'er or rarely been;
To climb the trackless mountain all unseen
With the wild flock that never needs a fold,
Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean—
Is a pleasure accorded to few only of the dwellers upon earth; seldom indeed to the few who could best appreciate the privilege. A large portion of the sum total of human existence is spent in cities. Outside of these, the wants of life, best supplied by the co-operation of numbers, gather people together in towns and villages. Travelling is generally such only as may be needful in the exercise of trades and professions, with a view to their ultimate end, the accumulation of wealth; or such as exhausted energies demand to fit them for further toil. The invalid, it is true, seeks to revive his failing powers in far-away balmy climates and delicious scenes—and there is a love for his birthplace in the heart of many a wanderer which leads him back time after time to the old homestead, and invests it with countless charms, although bleak and barren its surroundings may be—but to how few individuals it is given, in the fulness of their health and mental faculties, to rove abroad at will through the beauties and sublimities of creation—to look on her rolling oceans and broad lakes; her foaming cataracts and stupendous mountains; on the luxuriant loveliness of the torrid zone, and the icy wonders of the north!
Yet such things always make part of the expectancies, the bright anticipations of youth—the day-dreams, crushed down at last by hard realities. For to generation after generation the story of life is strangely the same. Its general events unfold themselves in a succession marked for each one with singular uniformity; a uniformity, indeed, so susceptible of calculation that on it are based many of its most extended speculations.
Pecuniary interests generally push their claims first and most boldly, because least to be evaded. Then come the petty edicts of an artificial social existence, which command and receive submission before their presence is even suspected, and though their power be neither recognized nor acknowledged. Gradually the turning kaleidoscope of time shows more sombre colors; the path to be trodden is made visible—the mind bends itself to the narrow way—earthly happiness seeks its realization in a circumscribed sphere—and so, one by one, the winged thoughts lower their circle of flight, and the dreamer ceases to dream.