y where my
connexions, my companionships, and my habits, had been formed. A new
viceroy was announced; and I solicited my recall. But I had still one
remarkable duty to undergo.

The northern insurrection had sunk, and sunk with a rapidity still more
unexpected than the suddenness of its rise. The capture of its leader
was a blow at the heart, and it lost all power at the instant. In the
Castle all was self-congratulation, and the officials talked of the
revolt with as much scorn as if there existed no elements of discord in
the land. But I was not quite so easily inclined to regard all things
through the skirts of the rainbow which had succeeded the storm; however
unwilling to check the national exultation among a people who are as
fond of painting the world _couleur de rose_ as the French; laugh as
much, and enjoy their laugh much more--my communications with England
constantly warned ministers of the hazard of new insurrections, on a
broader, deeper, and more desolating scale. Even my brief tour of the
island had shown me, that there were materials of wilder inflammability
in the bosom of the south than in the north. The northern revolt was
like the burning of a house--the whole was before the eye, the danger
might be measured at a glance, the means of extinction might operate
upon it in their full power, and when the materials of the house were in
ashes, the conflagration died. But the southern insurrection was the
burning of a coalmine--a fire ravaging where human skill could scarcely
gain access, kindled among stores of combustion scarcely to be
calculated by human experience, growing fiercer the deeper it
descended, and at every new burst undermining the land, and threatening
to carry down into its gulfs all that was stately or venerable on the
surface of the soil.

I continued to represent that the north had revolted only on theories of
government, metaphysical reveries, pamphleteering abstractions--food too
thin to nurture the fierce firmness by which conspiracy is to be carried
forward into triumph; while the south pondered on real or fancied
injuries, which wounded the pride of every peasant within its
borders.--That the one took up arms for republicanism, the feeblest of
all temptations to national resistance; while the other brooded over a
sense of wrong, in visions of revenge for hereditary rights, and the
hopes of restoring the fallen supremacy of its religion--motives, in
every age, the most absorbing