nshine and was exhilarated only by the
lightnings of indignation--this was the highest and best state of moral
feeling to which the most noble-minded among us could attain.

But, from the moment of the rising of the people of the Pyrenean
peninsula, there was a mighty change; we were instantaneously animated;
and, from that moment, the contest assumed the dignity, which it is not
in the power of any thing but hope to bestow: and, if I may dare to
transfer language, prompted by a revelation of the state of being that
admits not of decay or change, to the concerns and interests of our
transitory planet, from that moment 'this corruptible put on
incorruption, and this mortal put on immortality.' This sudden elevation
was on no account more welcome--was by nothing more endeared, than by
the returning sense which accompanied it of inward liberty and choice,
which gratified our moral yearnings, inasmuch as it would give
henceforward to our actions as a people, an origination and direction
unquestionably moral--as it was free--as it was manifestly in sympathy
with the species--as it admitted therefore of fluctuations of generous
feeling--of approbation and of complacency. We were intellectualized
also in proportion; we looked backward upon the records of the human
race with pride, and, instead of being afraid, we delighted to look
forward into futurity. It was imagined that this new-born spirit of
resistance, rising from the most sacred feelings of the human heart,
would diffuse itself through many countries; and not merely for the
distant future, but for the present, hopes were entertained as bold as
they were disinterested and generous.

Never, indeed, was the fellowship of our sentient nature more intimately
felt--never was the irresistible power of justice more gloriously
displayed than when the British and Spanish Nations, with an impulse
like that of two ancient heroes throwing down their weapons and
reconciled in the field, cast off at once their aversions and enmities,
and mutually embraced each other--to solemnize this conversion of love,
not by the festivities of peace, but by combating side by side through
danger and under affliction in the devotedness of perfect brotherhood.
This was a conjunction which excited hope as fervent as it was
rational. On the one side was a nation which brought with it sanction
and authority, inasmuch as it had tried and approved the blessings for
which the other had risen to contend: t