The Prose Works of William Wordsworth: For the First Time Collected, With Additions from Unpublished Manuscripts.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The Prose Works of William Wordsworth: For the First Time Collected, With Additions from Unpublished Manuscripts.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
Allowing that the 'regni novitas' should either compel or tempt the
Usurper to do away some ancient abuses, and to accord certain
insignificant privileges to the People upon the purlieus of the forest
of Freedom (for assuredly he will never suffer them to enter the body of
it); allowing this, and much more; that the mass of the Population would
be placed in a condition outwardly more thriving--would be _better off_
(as the phrase in conversation is); it is still true that--in the act
and consciousness of submission to an imposed lord and master, to a will
not growing out of themselves, to the edicts of another People their
triumphant enemy--there would be the loss of a sensation within for
which nothing external, even though it should come close to the garden
and the field--to the door and the fire-side, can make amends. The
Artisan and the Merchant (men of classes perhaps least attached to their
native soil) would not be insensible to this loss; and the Mariner, in
his thoughtful mood, would sadden under it upon the wide ocean. The
central or cardinal feeling of these thoughts may, at a future time,
furnish fit matter for the genius of some patriotic Spaniard to express
in his own noble language--as an inscription for the Sword of Francis
the First; if that Sword, which was so ingloriously and perfidiously
surrendered, should ever, by the energies of Liberty, be recovered, and
deposited in its ancient habitation in the Escurial. The Patriot will
recollect that,--if the memorial, then given up by the hand of the
Government, had also been abandoned by the heart of the People, and that
indignity patiently subscribed to,--his country would have been lost for
ever.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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