and it is not to be denied, that the effort, if it had the determination, wanted the cheerfulness of duty.  Our condition savoured too much of a grinding constraint—­too much of the vassalage of necessity;—­it had too much of fear, and therefore of selfishness, not to be contemplated in the main with rueful emotion.  We desponded though we did not despair.  In fact a deliberate and preparatory fortitude—­a sedate and stern melancholy, which had no sunshine and was exhilarated only by the lightnings of indignation—­this was the highest and best state of moral feeling to which the most noble-minded among us could attain.

But, from the moment of the rising of the people of the Pyrenean peninsula, there was a mighty change; we were instantaneously animated; and, from that moment, the contest assumed the dignity, which it is not in the power of any thing but hope to bestow:  and, if I may dare to transfer language, prompted by a revelation of the state of being that admits not of decay or change, to the concerns and interests of our transitory planet, from that moment ’this corruptible put on incorruption, and this mortal put on immortality.’  This sudden elevation was on no account more welcome—­was by nothing more endeared, than by the returning sense which accompanied it of inward liberty and choice, which gratified our moral yearnings, inasmuch as it would give henceforward to our actions as a people, an origination and direction unquestionably moral—­as it was free—­as it was manifestly in sympathy with the species—­as it admitted therefore of fluctuations of generous feeling—­of approbation and of complacency.  We were intellectualized also in proportion; we looked backward upon the records of the human race with pride, and, instead of being afraid, we delighted to look forward into futurity.  It was imagined that this new-born spirit of resistance, rising from the most sacred feelings of the human heart, would diffuse itself through many countries; and not merely for the distant future, but for the present, hopes were entertained as bold as they were disinterested and generous.

Never, indeed, was the fellowship of our sentient nature more intimately felt—­never was the irresistible power of justice more gloriously displayed than when the British and Spanish Nations, with an impulse like that of two ancient heroes throwing down their weapons and reconciled in the field, cast off at once their aversions and enmities, and mutually embraced each other—­to solemnize this conversion of love, not by the festivities of peace, but by combating side by side through danger and under affliction in the devotedness of perfect brotherhood.  This was a conjunction which excited hope as fervent as it was rational.  On the one side was a nation which brought with it sanction and authority, inasmuch as it had tried and approved the blessings for which the other had risen to contend:  the one was a people which, by the help of the surrounding ocean