Valencia is under the seal of the same obligation.  The multitudes of men who were arrayed in the fields of Baylen, and upon the mountains of the North; the peasants of Asturias, and the students of Salamanca; and many a solitary and untold-of hand, which, quitting for a moment the plough or the spade, has discharged a more pressing debt to the country by levelling with the dust at least one insolent and murderous Invader;—­these have attested the efficacy of the passions which we have been contemplating—­that the will of good men is not a vain impulse, heroic desires a delusive prop;—­have proved that the condition of human affairs is not so forlorn and desperate, but that there are golden opportunities when the dictates of justice may be unrelentingly enforced, and the beauty of the inner mind substantiated in the outward act;—­for a visible standard to look back upon; for a point of realized excellence at which to aspire; a monument to record;—­for a charter to fasten down; and, as far as it is possible, to preserve.

Yes! there was an annunciation which the good received with gladness; a bright appearance which emboldened the wise to say—­We trust that Regeneration is at hand; these are works of recovered innocence and wisdom: 

    Magnus ab integro seclorum nascitur ordo;
    Jam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna;
    Jam nova progenies coelo demittitur alto.

The spirits of the generous, of the brave, of the meditative, of the youthful and undefiled—­who, upon the strongest wing of human nature, have accompanied me in this journey into a fair region—­must descend:  and, sorrowful to think! it is at the name and remembrance of Britain that we are to stoop from the balmy air of this pure element.  Our country did not create, but there was created for her, one of those golden opportunities over which we have been rejoicing:  an invitation was offered—­a summons sent to her ear, as if from heaven, to go forth also and exhibit on her part, in entire coincidence and perfect harmony, the beneficent action with the benevolent will; to advance in the career of renovation upon which the Spaniards had so gloriously entered; and to solemnize yet another marriage between Victory and Justice.  How she acquitted herself of this duty, we have already seen and lamented:  yet on this—­and on this duty only—­ought the mind of that army and of the government to have been fixed.  Every thing was smoothed before their feet;—­Providence, it might almost be said, held forth to the men of authority in this country a gracious temptation to deceive them into the path of the new virtues which were stirring;—­the enemy was delivered over to them; and they were unable to close their infantine fingers upon the gift.—­The helplessness of infancy was their’s—­oh! could I but add, the innocence of infancy!