For we do not raise our statues except to men whose worth Those heroes were our sires, and we are worthy them to-day. Nay, not in your new Commons' House, lest on the pedestal Enshrine it rather in some cell where Chartist 'felon' waits, gates. Place it where murdered Tyler fell, but first avenge his fall; And reverent there, as at a shrine, let stalwart men be seen, And praying 'mid the harvest glare unto that Reaper bold, How should he stand in the market-place, in the City of the Knave? How could he stand on English earth, upon the Cowards' Seek out some mountain-wild, till now unseen by all but God, Nay! yonder we may find a site,-yon wide and open field, Swear by the strength of Cromwell's soul to win their freedom There raise the Hero's monument, when deeds have clench'd When Our Home, our Cromwell's England, the brave England of the sea the Free. SPARTACUS. YOUNG ENGLAND. Alas for England! The glory hath departed from her. Already the Empire totters to its fall. Alas for the Decrepid! Moribund Protectionists chaunt its dirge; miserable Shopmen sing smally the praises of effeteness; Irishmen snarlingly take up the echo; even the Republicans of other lands have given us up. Alas for the Decline' and Fall of the British Empire! And truly we ourselves may find occasion for lamentation and for dread. Not merely that two millions of our race have perished of famine, that the steady ebb-tide of emigration is draining the life-blood of the sister-island; our English veins also are becoming flaccid. Curses come home to roost. Yet a little while, and other races, not burthened as we are with the taxes of our sins, shall compete even with the 'nation of shopkeepers.' American enterprize goes a-head. Bankruptcy falls upon the loser. Idleness and Misery and Weakness follow. Emigration drains the very dregs of strength. Whiggism (worst Weakness) leads Weakness. Whither? Our Colonies revolt; our possessions are sent away; our last customers are gone. What is left to the despised and bankrupt country? A people without manhood, without faith or chivalry,-a vicious and cowardly, a dwindled, dwarfed, and degenerate race,- -a horde of factory slaves, the helots of the ruined factors who trample upon the dust and ashes of once healthy and vigorous England. Is the Woe not threatened? Read the census; read the statistics of emigration; mark the gratulation of our rivals, already close upon us; question the puny and vicious children of Squalor in our towns, and the brutes that people our villages; study only one week's police-report of the morals of society—the nameless outrages upon women and children, as if the many were already sunk below the beasts that at lowest are not unnatural; -and ask our teachers and medeciners what they are doing toward a remedy. The virus has eaten into our bones. It is rottenness to the core. Is not God's wrath a consequence? Does not death follow on disease? O Sodom and Gomorrah! what hope is there of recovery? Is this Old England? Alas, my Country! Yet, make the leper clean, and the strong man shall go on his way rejoicing. The Decline of England'! Well may the scorn of foreigners be on us, when a Palmerston is allowed to trail the English flag in the rear of every scoundrel Despotism of Europe. And foreigners are preparing for the Republic, while we are idle. No wonder that the Men of the Past, whose eyes are in their backs, should think the Nation ruined, when it declines to be only a brute grazing never so comfortably upon ex-feudal landlords' pastures. And no wonder if men wiser than their Ex-Feudalities, yet men without active faith, await 'events' with terror, cowering ignominiously before the purse-hearted Lords of the Present. But the Men of the Future, those who dare throw off the green spectacles fashioned for a short-sighted generation, may behold some hope shining: starlike, through the fog. Let the leper but become clean. foulness which makes us weak. It is our national Without religion, The evil is our own: our ruin will be our own work. without any high morality, without common purpose, ignorant, sordid, and divided; each one intent only upon his own gain, and that for the mere gratification of a degraded selfishness; held together as a people only by opportunities of traffic, or by what is called accident (though indeed that saving accident is God's law of nationality, whose meaning is not understood): English Society bears within it the seeds of dissolution. Can all this be remedied by merely reducing the fees of our quack-doctors (as the financial reformers recommend), or by never so well endowed jaw-bones of clergymen, with amplest accommodation for an auditory that will not listen to them? Cheapest quack-salve and endless echoes from empty tombs: how shall they redeem or cure a nation? Must the diseased die? or is there yet time for a curative change? Free, healthful, and strong in virtue of a common faith, we would be equal to any fortune. Turn over another leaf of History. 'India is free: the remorseless Shopkeepers have been driven out. The Australian and New-Zealand Republics are flourishing. Canada and the Cape are independent. The WestIndies no longer belong to Britain. The Ionian Islands are a part of regenerated Greece. Malta is restored to Italy. The Republic of Spain and Portugal has reclaimed Gibraltar. Even those remnants of the old Norman Duchy, Jersey and Guernsey, have been resigned to their mother-country, France.' And yet the foreboding is not accomplished. Great-Britain is yet a nation, and a Power among the Nations. Let our colonies and our possessions slip from our grasp. What then? What were England's dependences when Alfred royally ruled the land? when England's Kings were occasionally crowned in Paris? What her foreign possessions when Elizabeth sank the Armada? when Cromwell's righteous sword was a lightning-terror to the tyrants of all lands? What if our competitors undersell us? Is there no greatness but in being carrier or artificer to the world? no grandeur except in shopkeeping. Is Virtue nothing? Is it nothing to be a nation of freemen, of heroes, an example to teach the nations how to live'? Not in any outer happenings, but in ourselves is the true source of our weakness, the only evil which can cause our decline. Where is the unflinching purpose of a Wickliffe, never failing though his ashes were mingled and 'lost' in the eternal seas? Where is the devout martyrspirit of an Eliot or a Pym, the iron will of a Cromwell, the courageous passion of a Milton growing blind with his steady gaze on Freedom? Where is a Fox, cased in one garment of unseemly leather, rather than be the slave of the world and the false world's fashions? Where the sturdiness of a Bunyan, caring nothing for imprisonment or obloquy, so that in his Progress he may bear witness to his ideal of the Truth. Where is the Hero-spirit which engendered in this English earth those Worthies of old time, our Martyrs and our Prophets? Does not our impotent Shame insult their tombs and give the lie to their most glorious visions? Our lost King Arthur does not come again. Where is the heroic spirit which alone made England great? Spending itself behind a chandler's counter,-wasting itself, like some poor unhappy Nelson, in propping up a rotten Curse,―or bowed down over its scriptures in some narrow poet's garret, devouring its own heart. Look upon our public men, whatever their capacity; gaze into the many beautiful faces of private worth: where is the hero-spirit which of old made England great? That Hero-Spirit was Public Spirit, the Spirit of Patriotic Duty: born of the manly Zeal who loved and lived with Truth, following her however far from his pleasant hearth, never questioning through what thickets or world-entanglements he might be led, asking neither how many were the awaiting dangers, nor how long and strongly they might have been encamped. The Public Spirit of to-day inquires first of his Nurse: May I go so far alone? dear Mrs. Grundy?' And on his little way he never ceases to question-not Truth, but his own internal Cowardice,—if yonder social jungle is not too thick for one poor man to break through; if yonder Falsehoods are not so many that their hissing arrows will drown my friends' encouraging shouts; or if yonder banded Wrong has not encamped so long upon the land as really to have acquired a legal title to possession. 'Let me turn back, good Truth! I dare say we may meet again in Heaven; or come sometimes to call upon me in my study, while my wife is busy-catechizing our young knaves. But here'-with increasing trepidation--'your company is inconvenient.' English Public Spirit now wears broad-cloth which may not be soiled or torn. English Patriotism is tender-skinned and fears the breath of heaven; is so delicate or so puny that it dares not walk alone in the jostling streets. And Truth is altogether too rude to be its playmate. Would that even the Cossack Barbarism might swarm up our cliffs, so that it should arouse the stout-heartedness which drove back a dismayed and baffled Cæsar. Though, if the Tartars would but spare our shop-fronts, it might be politic to illuminate their triumphal entry into London. O for any peril or disaster that should stir the sick self-prostrated giant, and make him take up his bed and walk. You tell me 'We have our Heroes still: but they dwell alone, in silent meditation, for they know of none to appreciate their achievements or to stand by them during their endeavour.' Art thou still-born, O Heroism? O, my Heroes! the men of a less-enlightened day asked not for appreciation, waited not for a company to be gathered around their tiny candle cowardly hidden under a bushel. Of old the fire-soul of the Hero blazed up God-ward, careless of appreciation; and to that pillar of leadership in the wilderness, like a beacon on an ancient hill, the Ironsides collected,-slowly perhaps at first, but surely. Meanwhile Faith kept the beacon-flame supplied. So must it be again. Not in the closet, like a conspirator,—but in the face of day, athwart opposal, and in the hurricane of action, the Hero waits his like. Come forth, thou who art of Herobreeding! show thyself, and Heroes will stand by thee. But 'thy poet deeds will be mocked by the practical and ignorant'; and thou art so far beyond thy time.' Ascend then the pyre of sacrifice, whatever slaves have piled it in the market-place; and let thy soul take flight from thence to heaven, to shine in the dawning of the redemption of a later age. But come forth Son of the Heroes of old time! Wrong not the brethren of thy blood with thy inactive doubt make thyself manifest; and it is possible that the heroic will be appreciated even in these slop-selling and degenerate days. 'Is there room then in this busy land for unmarketable Heroism?' Doubt it not. And of what sort ?' Of that sort which holds faith in God and Humanity, which inspires a man with a lively ambition to regenerate his nation, and bids him seek occasion not merely to cultivate his own nature for his own satisfaction, but also to take counsel and associate with his fellows for the better learning and procural of those measures of public reformation, by which the land may be thoroughly redeemed, and the sure foundations laid of a Young England whose glories shall overstep the proudest memories of our race. We invoke the Heroism which shall form an English Party, a National Party, whose lives shall be an example to their countrymen, whose integrity and wisdom shall compel confidence, whose banded strength shall be sufficient to lead the People-beyond Whiggery and 'Radical' delusions-to the establishing of a rule and organization in which and through which the whole Nation may become Heroic,-healthful, brave, and noble,-worthy to be the inheritor of old renown.' We summon together all true workmen, to build up the temple of onr English Republic: that the prophecy of Milton may be fulfilled. The means we choose hide not our aim from view! Let us be true! Our hope can not consent to doubtful deeds: Our strong will needs None but clean hands our righteous work to do. Let us be true! Thought, word, and deed, even as our cause, is pure; Firm to the end, whatever fate ensue ! |