For,sure egh,if once the law of veracity be ackledged as the rule for human things,there will anywhere be want of work for the reformer;in very few places do human things adhere quite closely to that law!Here was the Papa of Christendom proclaiming that such was actually the case;--whereupon all over Christendom such results as we have seen.The Sicilians,Ithink,were the first able body that set about applying this new strange rule sanctioned by the general Father;they said to themselves,We do by the law of veracity belong to Naples and these Neapolitan Officials;we will,by favor of Heaven and the Pope,be free of these.Fighting ensued;insurrection,fiercely maintained in the Sicilian Cities;with much bloodshed,much tumult and loud se,vociferation extending through all newspapers and countries.The effect of this,carried abroad by newspapers and rumor,was great in all places;greatest perhaps in Paris,which for sixty years past has been the City of Insurrections.The French People had plumed themselves on being,whatever else they were ,at least the chosen "soldiers of liberty,"who took the lead of all creatures in that pursuit,at least;and had become,as their orators,editors and litterateurs diligently taught them,a People whose bayonets were sacred,a kind of Messiah People,saving a blind world in its own despite,and earning for themselves a terrestrial and even celestial glory very considerable indeed.And here were the wretched down-trodden populations of Sicily risen to rival them,and threatening to take the trade out of their hand.
Doubt of it,this hearing continually of the very Pope's glory as a Reformer,of the very Sicilians fighting divinely for liberty behind barricades,--must have bitterly aggravated the feeling of every Frenchman,as he looked around him,at home,on a Louis-Philippism which had become the scorn of all the world.
"Ichabod ;is the glory departing from us?Under the sun is hing baser,by all accounts and evidences,than the system of repression and corruption,of shameless dishonesty and unbelief in anything but human baseness,that we live under.The Italians,the very Pope,have become apostles of liberty,and France is--what is France!"--We k what France suddenly became in the end of February next;and by a clear egh genealogy,we can trace a considerable share in that event to the good simple Pope with the New Testament in his hand.An outbreak,or at least a radical change and even inversion of affairs hardly to be achieved without an outbreak,everybody felt was inevitable in France:but it had been universally expected that France would as usual take the initiative in that matter;and had there been reforming Pope,insurrectionary Sicily,France had certainly broken out then and so,but only afterwards and otherwise.The French explosion,anticipated by the cunningest men there on the spot scrutinizing it,burst up unlimited,complete,defying computation or control.
Close following which,as if by sympathetic subterranean electricities,all Europe exploded,boundless,uncontrollable;and we had the year 1848,one of the most singular,disastrous,amazing,and,on the whole,humiliating years the European world ever saw.since the irruption of the thern Barbarians has there been the like.Everywhere immeasurable Democracy rose monstrous,loud,blatant,inarticulate as the voice of Chaos.
Everywhere the Official holy-of-holies was scandalously laid bare to dogs and the profane:--Enter,all the world,see what kind of Official holy it is.Kings everywhere,and reigning persons,stared in sudden horror,the voice of the whole world bellowing in their ear,"Begone,ye imbecile hypocrites,histrios heroes!Off with you,off!"and,what was peculiar and able in this year for the first time,the Kings all made haste to go,as if exclaiming,"We are poor histrios,we sure egh;--did you want heroes?Don't kill us;we couldn't help it!"one of them turned round,and stood upon his Kingship,as upon a right he could afford to die for,or to risk his skin upon;by manner of means.That,I say,is the alarming peculiarity at present.Democracy,on this new occasion,finds all Kings conscious that they are but Play-actors.The miserable mortals,enacting their High Life Below Stairs,with faith only that this Universe may perhaps be all a phantasm and hypocrisis,--the truculent Constable of the Destinies suddenly enters:
"Scandalous Phantasms,what do you here?Are 'solemnly constituted Impostors'the proper Kings of men?Did you think the Life of Man was a grimacing dance of apes?To be led always by the squeak of your paltry fiddle?Ye miserable,this Universe is an upholstery Puppet-play,but a terrible God's Fact;and you,I think,--had you better begone!"They fled precipitately,some of them with what we may call an exquisite iginy,--in terror of the treadmill or worse.And everywhere the people,or the populace,take their own government upon themselves;and open "kinglessness,"what we call anarchy ,--how happy if it be anarchy plus a street-constable!--is everywhere the order of the day.Such was the history,from Baltic to Mediterranean,in Italy,France,Prussia,Austria,from end to end of Europe,in those March days of 1848.Since the destruction of the old Roman Empire by inroad of the thern Barbarians,Ihave kn hing similar.
