nations than any in which we have
lived--any indeed of which we have read. History gives us accounts of
the rapid march and equally rapid conquests by ambitious kings, who
seemed only happy in the unhappiness of others, and only proud of
destroying that which constituted the pride of others. From time to
time ambitious men have exhibited themselves in the great theatre of
the world, and their greatness has been measured by the extent of
misery they have produced; and their claims to permanent fame have
rested upon the rapidity that marked their destruction of cities,
kingdoms and empires. While between the epochs which are distinguished
by these promoters of extensive mischief, there have at all times been
humble imitators of their crimes, whose limited power of doing
confined their actions to provinces, and compelled them to be
ministers of local vengeance, and the enjoyers of that petty infamy
which results from numerable murders and calculable crime. It is but
too evident that order has had its antagonists, at all times and in
all degrees, and if history has been employed with the works of those
whose extensive scale of action gives larger consequence to their
movements, it cannot be doubted that society has been convulsed at its
centre by the restless and the bad, who have been as efficient in
their sphere of wrong doing as have been those who occupied a larger
space. The latter struck the elevated, and disturbed public relations;
the former sent home its weapon to the humble, and brought disturbance
and misery into the more limited circle, reaching social life and
stabbing even to the heart of domestic peace.

Such great events have marked epochs, or made them; and such small
occurrences have been the characteristics of almost all times; so that
the wars of the present century may be considered but as continuations
of the belligerent movements of other times, modified indeed by the
improvement of the present age, but still of the same spirit and from
the same motives. But the events of the past year are of another kind.
The disturbances that have distinguished the history of Europe in that
time are not the result of the mad ambition of a conqueror to add to
his possessions, and subjugate kings and kingdoms as a means of
gratifying ambition; foreign conquest and invasion from abroad are not
now the occurrences which European rulers fear or anticipate. The
convulsions that distinguish every empire from the Atlantic