to be found Krasinski's abiding conviction that Poland's
salvation consists in the abjuring of vengeance--that the political
redemption of the world would be achieved by her sufferings, as mankind
was redeemed by the sufferings of Christ. The agony of Poland was not
regarded by him as merited for any crimes in the past. She was an
innocent victim, and the greater the wrong inflicted on her, the greater
was the chance of her ultimate victory. In what was the darkest hour of
his life, in 1846, when the Galician peasantry, incited by Austrian
propagandists, rose and massacred the Polish nobles and Austria annexed
Cracow, he wrote: 'That last span of earth torn from us by the fourth
partition has more than anything else advanced our cause. Every wound
inflicted on something holy and good becomes a far deeper wound, by the
reflection of the Divine Justice that rules history, on him who
inflicted it.' And again: 'There was never a nation in such sublime
circumstances, in such favourable conditions, who was so near, from the
cross on which she hangs, to heaven whither she must ascend.' It will be
readily understood that this panegyric of suffering, coming from a man
who had not fought for his country or suffered forfeiture of his wealth,
did not appeal to all Polish patriots. The gospel of pardon and the
acceptance of pain revolted men like Kamienski and Slowacki, who
resented the tone of the Psalms of the Future, in which Krasinski's
distrust of democratic propaganda found impassioned utterance. His
appeal to his countrymen to adopt the watchword of love and not that of
terrorism was ineffective; but the catastrophe of 1846, though it
shattered his health, did not shatter his belief that Poland's
resurrection depended on each Pole's personal purity of heart and deed.
His last national poems are prayers for goodwill. In 'Resurrecturis' his
answer to the eternal mystery of undeserved pain is that the 'quiet
might of sacrifice' was 'the only power in the world which could crush
Poland's crushing fate,' As the late Professor Morfill well said of him,
Krasinski 'always stood by the open grave of his country,' and the
somewhat cloudy mysticism in which he found his chief consolation is too
rarefied for robuster minds. Yet his hope never wholly failed: the
saying that he quoted to encourage his friend Soltan--'_speravit contra
spem_: that is a great and holy word of the sacred Scriptures'--might
stand for his motto; and a saying from