cause shadowy and
illimitable, so potent to magnify and unvulgarize any interest, that
more books have been written upon Cabool, and through a more enduring
tract of time, than upon Moscow. Great was the convulsion in either
case; but that caused by Cabool has proved the less transitory. The vast
_anabasis_ to Moscow had emanated from a people not conspicuously
careful of public morality. But that later _anabasis_, which ascended to
the shining pinnacles of Candahar, and which stained with blood of men
the untrodden snows of the Hindoo Koosh, was the work of a nation--no
matter whether more moral in a practical sense, upon that we do not here
dispute--but undeniably fermenting with the anxieties and jealousies of
moral aspirations beyond any other people whatever. Some persons have
ascribed to Blumenbach (heretofore the great Goettingen naturalist) an
opinion as to the English which we have good reason to think that he
never uttered--viz. that the people of this island are the most
voluptuous of nations, and that we bear it written in our national
countenance. But suppose him to have said this, and secondly, (which is
a trifle more important,) suppose it to be true, not the less we assert
the impassioned predominance of a moral interest in this nation. The
intensity of this principle is such, that it works with the fury and
agitation of an appetite. It urges us to the very brink of civil war.
Two centuries back--yes, exactly to a month, two centuries--we were all
at Marston Moor, cutting throats upon the largest scale. And why? under
the coercion of principles equally sublime on _both_ sides. Then it
_did_ urge us into war. Now it does not--because the resistance is
stronger, and by no means because the impulse is less. On a May morning
in 1844, a question arises in the senate as to factory labour. On one
side it shows an aspect critical for the interests of human nature in
its widest stratum--viz. amongst the children of toil. Immediately, as
at the sound of a signal-gun, five hundred of our fervent journals open
their batteries this way and that upon an inquest of truth. "All the
people quake like dew." The demoniacs of Palestine were not more shaken
of old by internal possessions, than the heart of England is swayed to
and fro under the action of this or similar problems. Epilepsy is not
more overmastering than is the tempest of moral strife in England. And a
new dawn is arising upon us in the prospect, that henceforth