The International Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, August, 1851Various
History
The International Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, August, 1851
Various
Art, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Science -- History -- Periodicals
_Nicholas._--Republic indeed! I have ordered it to be a crime in
France to utter this odious name. President forsooth! we have directed
him hitherto; let him now keep his way. Our object was to stifle the
spirit of freedom: we tossed the handkerchief to him, and he found the
chloroform. Every thing is going on in Europe exactly as I desire; we
must throw nothing in the way to shake the machine off the rail. It is
running at full speed where no whistle can stop it. Every prince is
exasperating his subjects, and exhausting his treasury in order to
keep them under due control. What nation on the continent, mine
excepted, can maintain for two years longer its present war
establishment? And without this engine of coercion what prince can be
the master of his people? England is tranquil at home; can she
continue so when a foreigner would place a tiara over her crown,
telling her who shall teach and what shall be taught. Principally,
that where masses are not said for departed souls, better it would be
that there were no souls at all, since they certainly must be damned.
The school which doubts it is denounced as godless.
_Nesselrode._--England, sire, is indeed tranquil at home; but that
home is a narrow one, and extends not across the Irish channel. Every
colony is dissatisfied and disturbed. No faith has been kept with any
of them by the secretary now in office. At the Cape of Good Hope,
innumerable nations, warlike and well-armed, have risen up
simultaneously against her; and, to say nothing of the massacres in
Ceylon, your Majesty well knows what atrocities her Commissioner has
long exercised in the Seven Isles. England looks on and applauds,
taking a hearty draught of Lethe at every sound of the scourge.
_Nicholas._--Nesselrode! You seem indignant. I see only the cheerful
sparks of a fire at which our dinner is to be dressed; we shall soon
sit down to it; Greece must not call me away until I rise from the
dessert; I will then take my coffee at Constantinople. The crescent
ere long will become the full harvest-moon. Our reapers have already
the sickles in their hands.
_Nesselrode._--England may grumble.
_Nicholas._--So she will. She is as ready now to grumble as she
formerly was to fight. She grumbles too early; she fights too late.
Extraordinary men are the English. They raise the hustings higher than
the throne; and, to make amends, being resolved to build a new palace,
they push it under an old bridge. The Cardinal, in his way to the
Abbey, may in part disrobe at it. Noble vestry-room! where many
habiliments are changed. Capacious dovecote! where carrier-pigeons and
fantails and croppers, intermingled with the more ordinary, bill and
coo, ruffle and smoothen their feathers, and bend their versicolor
necks to the same corn.
From Bentley's Miscellany for July.
LONDON, PARIS, AND NEW-YORK.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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