The Prose Works of William Wordsworth: For the First Time Collected, With Additions from Unpublished Manuscripts. In Three Volumes.Wordsworth, William
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The Prose Works of William Wordsworth: For the First Time Collected, With Additions from Unpublished Manuscripts. In Three Volumes.
Wordsworth, William
English literature -- 19th century
So will it ever fare with foreign Tyrants when (in spite of domestic
abuses) a People, which has lived long, feels that it has a Country to
love; and where the heart of that People is sound. Between the native
inhabitants of France and Spain there has existed from the earliest
period, and still does exist, an universal and utter dissimilitude in
laws, actions, deportment, gait, manners, customs: join with this the
difference in the language, and the barrier of the Pyrenees; a
separation and an opposition in great things, and an antipathy in small.
Ignorant then must he be of history and of the reports of travellers and
residents in the two countries, or strangely inattentive to the
constitution of human nature, who (this being true) can admit the
belief that the Spaniards, numerous and powerful as they are, will live
under Frenchmen as their lords and masters. Let there be added to this
inherent mutual repulsiveness--those recent indignities and horrible
outrages; and we need not fear to say that such reconcilement is
impossible; even without that further insuperable obstacle which we hope
will exist, an establishment of a free Constitution in Spain.--The
intoxicated setter-up of Kings may fill his diary with pompous stories
of the acclamations with which his solemn puppets are received; he may
stuff their mouths with impious asseverations; and hire knees to bend
before them, and lips to answer with honied greetings of gratitude and
love: these cannot remove the old heart, and put a new one into the
bosom of the spectators. The whole is a pageant seen for a day among men
in its passage to that 'Limbo large and broad' whither, as to their
proper home, fleet
All the unaccomplish'd works of Nature's hand,
Abortive, monstrous, or unkindly mix'd,
_Dissolv'd on earth_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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