rarily arrested and confined without trial and proof of crime;
that men and women, with due regard to the rights of others, should be
permitted to marry whomsoever they please; that, in fact, a total change
in the spirit of government, so imperatively needed in France, was
necessary. These were among the great ideas which the reformers
advocated, but which they did not know how practically to secure on
those principles of justice which they abstractly invoked,--ideas never
afterwards lost sight of, in all the changes of government. And it is
remarkable that the flagrant evils which the Revolution so ruthlessly
swept away have never since been revived, and never can be revived any
more than the oracles of Dodona or the bulls of Mediaeval Rome; amid the
storms and the whirlwinds and the fearful convulsions and horrid
anarchies and wicked passions of a great catastrophe, the imperishable
ideas of progress forced their way.

Nor could Burke foresee the ultimate results of the Revolution any more
than he would admit the truths which were overshadowed by errors and
crimes. Nor, inflamed with rage and scorn, was he wise in the remedies
he proposed. Only God can overrule the wrath of man, and cause melodious
birth-songs to succeed the agonies of dissolution. Burke saw the
absurdity of sophistical theories and impractical equality,--liberty
running into license, and license running into crime; he saw
pretensions, quackeries, inexperience, folly, and cruelty, and he
prophesied what their legitimate effect would be: but he did not see in
the Revolution the pent-up indignation and despair of centuries, nor did
he hear the voices of hungry and oppressed millions crying to heaven
for vengeance. He did not recognize the chastening hand of God on
tyrants and sensualists; he did not see the arm of retributive justice,
more fearful than the daggers of Roman assassins, more stern than the
overthrow of Persian hosts, more impressive than the handwriting on the
wall of Belshazzar's palace; nor could he see how creation would succeed
destruction amid the burnings of that vast funeral pyre. He foresaw,
perhaps, that anarchy would be followed by military despotism; but he
never anticipated a Napoleon Bonaparte, or the military greatness of a
nation so recently ground down by Jacobin orators and sentimental
executioners. He never dreamed that out of the depths and from the
clouds and amid the conflagration there would come a deliverance, at
lea