Зображення сторінки
PDF
ePub

PART I.-HISTORICAL.

VOL. XIV. PART I.

A

PART I.—HISTORICAL.

CHAPTER I.

OPENING OF PARLIAMENT.

General aspect of affairs.-Meeting of Parliament.-King's Speech.-Debates on the Address.

Ir is impossible for any man of common observation to direct his attention to the events which are now oc. curring, and the changes which are in progress throughout the civilized world, without perceiving that a prodigious impulse, whether for good or for evil, has been communicated to the human mind, and that a vivifying spirit has breathed over the slumbering energies of men, like that on the valley of dry bones in the Prophet's vision. To whatever cause, or combination of co-existent and co-operating causes, this phenomenon is to be ascribed, its existence is certain; and in Spain, Portugal, South America, France, Italy, Greece, and even Germany, the "principle of resurrection" is either in full activity, or, at least, there are discernible signs that some mighty crisis is rapidly approaching, and a power at work, the manifestations of which cannot be much longer repressed.

A 2

Knowledge, says Lord Bacon, is power; and when the maxim is applied, in its broadest sense, to the aggregate of knowledge, diffused at a period when science and literature, no longer confined to the speculative, or privileged few, have been rendered accessible to the great mass of human beings in every civilized country, its truth, though in a different sense from that contemplated by the great author, is pre-eminently and intuitively obvious. There have been periods, perhaps, when learning could boast of a few greater and brighter luminaries than any by which the broad firmament of intellect is now illuminated; but then they were so few, that, though stars of the first magnitude, their splendour served rather to render the surrounding darkness visible than to dispel it; while, to the contrast furnished by their own brightness with the general obscuration through which they shone, they have pro

« НазадПродовжити »