It is the idle population of editors,
etc., that has done all this in England. One perceives
clearly that ministers go forward in it against their will.
Even our heroisms at Alma--"a terrible, almost horrible,
operation"--Balaclava, and Inkermann, failed to raise a glow in his mind,
though he admitted the force of Tennyson's ringing lines. The alliance
with the "scandalous copper captain," elected by the French, as the Jews
chose Barabbas,--an alliance at which many patriots winced--was to him
only an added disgrace. Carlyle's comment on the subsequent visit to
Osborne of Victor Hugo's "brigand," and his reception within the pale of
legitimate sovereignty was, "Louis Bonaparte has not been shot hitherto.
That is the best that can be said." Sedan brought most men round to his
mind about Napoleon III.: but his approval of the policy of the Czars
remains open to the criticism of M. Lanin. In reference to the next great
struggle of the age, Carlyle was in full sympathy with the mass of his
countrymen. He was as much enraged by the Sepoy rebellion as were those
who blew the ringleaders from the muzzles of guns. "Tongue cannot speak,"
he exclaims, in the spirit of Noel Paton's picture, before it was amended
or spoilt, "the horrors that were done on the English by these mutinous
hyaenas. Allow hyaenas to mutiny and strange things will follow.
Pages:
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168