All of Europe is in a ferment, is
bubbling over in places. Napoleon has been hearsed for twelve years in
St. Helena. But the principles of the French Revolution are working.
Charles is king of France, but by the will of the nation first and by
the grace of God afterward. There is no republic there; but the
sovereignty of the people, the prime principle of the French Revolution,
has founded the right of Charles to rule.... And what of England? Fox
had rejoiced at the fall of the Bastille. Coleridge, Wordsworth, and
Southey had sung of liberty, exulting in the emancipation of peoples
from tyranny. Then they had changed. Liberalism had come under the heel
again. Revolution was feared and denounced. Liberal principles were
crushed.... But not for long. We students read Shelley and Byron. They
were now gone from earth, eleven and nine years respectively. They had
not altered their faith, dying in the heyday of youthful power. Would
they have changed at any age to which they might have lived? We believed
they would not have done so. But what of England? It is 1833 and the
reform bill is a year old. The rotten boroughs are abolished. There is a
semblance of democratic representation in Parliament. The Duke of
Wellington has suffered a decline in popularity. Italy is rising, for
Mazzini has come upon the scene.
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