more inevitable and momentous are the results, when the individual knows that the fire, which is reanimated in him, is not less lively in the breasts of his associates; and sees the signs and testimonies of his own power, incorporated with those of a growing multitude and not to be distinguished from them, accompany him wherever he moves.—­Hence those marvellous achievements which were performed by the first enthusiastic followers of Mohammed; and by other conquerors, who with their armies have swept large portions of the earth like a transitory wind, or have founded new religions or empires.—­But, if the object contended for be worthy and truly great (as, in the instance of the Spaniards, we have seen that it is); if cruelties have been committed upon an ancient and venerable people, which ‘shake the human frame with horror;’ if not alone the life which is sustained by the bread of the mouth, but that—­without which there is no life—­the life in the soul, has been directly and mortally warred against; if reason has had abominations to endure in her inmost sanctuary;—­then does intense passion, consecrated by a sudden revelation of justice, give birth to those higher and better wonders which I have described; and exhibit true miracles to the eyes of men, and the noblest which can be seen.  It may be added that,—­as this union brings back to the right road the faculty of imagination, where it is prone to err, and has gone farthest astray; as it corrects those qualities which (being in their essence indifferent), and cleanses those affections which (not being inherent in the constitution of man, nor necessarily determined to their object) are more immediately dependent upon the imagination, and which may have received from it a thorough taint of dishonour;—­so the domestic loves and sanctities which are in their nature less liable to be stained,—­so these, wherever they have flowed with a pure and placid stream, do instantly, under the same influence, put forth their strength as in a flood; and, without being sullied or polluted, pursue—­exultingly and with song—­a course which leads the contemplative reason to the ocean of eternal love.

I feel that I have been speaking in a strain which it is difficult to harmonize with the petty irritations, the doubts and fears, and the familiar (and therefore frequently undignified) exterior of present and passing events.  But the theme is justice:  and my voice is raised for mankind; for us who are alive, and for all posterity:—­justice and passion; clear-sighted aspiring justice, and passion sacred as vehement.  These, like twin-born Deities delighting in each other’s presence, have wrought marvels in the inward mind through the whole region of the Pyrenean Peninsula.  I have shewn by what process these united powers sublimated the objects of outward sense in such rites—­practices—­and ordinances of Religion—­as deviate from simplicity and wholesome piety; how they converted them to instruments of nobler use; and raised them to a conformity with things truly divine.  The same reasoning might have been carried into the customs of civil life and their accompanying imagery, wherever these also were inconsistent with the dignity of man; and like effects of exaltation and purification have been shewn.