many
of us read with a shock of surprise the passionate asseveration of a
gifted woman who declared that it was a monstrous wrong and wickedness
that ever she had been born. Job said much the same thing in his
delirium; but our great novelist put forth her complaint as the net
outcome of all her thought and culture. We only need to open an ordinary
newspaper to find that the famous writer's folly is shared by many
weaker souls; and the effect on the mind of a shrewd and contented man
is so startling that it resembles the emotion roused by grotesque wit.
The whole story of the ages tells us dismally what happens when unwise
people choose to claim the measure of liberty which they think good; but
somehow, though knowledge has come, wisdom lingers, and the grim old
follies rear themselves rankly among us in the age of reason.

When we remember the Swiss mountaineers who took their deaths joyously
in defence of their homes, when we read of the devoted brave one who
received the sheaf of spears in his breast and broke the oppressor's
array, none of us can think of mere vulgar rebellion. The Swiss were
fighting to free themselves from wrongs untold; and we should hold them
less than men if they had tamely submitted to be caged like poultry.
Again, we feel a thrill when we read the epitaph which says, "Gladly we
would have rested had we won freedom. We have lost, and very gladly
rest." The very air of bravery, of steady self-abnegation seems to
exhale from the sombre, triumphant words. Russia is the chosen home of
tyranny now, but her day of brightness will come again. It is safe to
prophesy so much, for I remember what happened at one time of supreme
peril. Prussia and Austria and Italy lay crushed and bleeding under the
awful power of Napoleon, and it seemed as though Russia must be wiped
out from the list of nations when the great army of invaders poured in
relentless multitudes over the stricken land. The conqueror appeared to
have the very forces of nature in his favour, and his hosts moved on
without a check and without a failure of organization. So perfectly had
he planned the minutest details that, although his stations were
scattered from the Beresina to the Seine, not so much as a letter was
lost during the onward movement. How could the doomed country resist? So
thought all Europe. But the splendid old Russian, the immortal
Koutousoff, had felt the pulse of his nation, and he was confident,
while all the other chief