rate, and to solve everything? Do you not feel that the old
world had an aged soul, tyranny, and that into the new world is about
to descend, necessarily, irresistibly, and divinely, a youthful soul,
liberty?

This was the work that the nineteenth century had done among men, and
was continuing in glorious, fashion to do,--that century of sterility,
that century of domination, that century of decadence, that century of
degradation, as it is called by the pedants, the rhetoricians, the
imbeciles, and all that filthy brood of bigots, of knaves, and of
sharpers, who sanctimoniously slaver gall upon glory, who assert that
Pascal was a madman, Voltaire a coxcomb, and Rousseau a brute, and
whose triumph it would be to put a fool's-cap upon the human race.

You speak of the Lower Empire; are you serious? Had the Lower Empire
behind it John Huss, Luther, Cervantes, Shakespere, Pascal, Moliere,
Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Mirabeau? Had the Lower Empire
behind it the taking of the Bastile, the Federation, Danton,
Robespierre, the Convention? Did the Lower Empire possess America? Had
the Lower Empire universal suffrage? Had the Lower Empire those two
ideas, country and humanity: country which enlarges the heart, humanity
which expands the horizon? Do you know that, under the Lower Empire,
Constantinople fell in ruins, and finally had only thirty thousand
inhabitants? Has Paris fallen so low? Because you have witnessed the
success of a pretorian _coup de main_, you liken yourselves to the
Lower Empire! 'Tis quickly said, and meanly thought. But reflect, if
you can. Had the Lower Empire the compass, the electric battery, the
printing press, the newspaper, the locomotive, the electric telegraph?
So many wings to bear man aloft, which the Lower Empire did not
possess! The nineteenth century soars, where the Lower Empire crawled.
Are you aware of this? What! Shall we see once more the Empress Zoe,
Roman Argyrio, Nicephorus Logothetes, Michael Calafates? Nonsense! Do
you imagine that Providence repeats itself so tamely? Do you believe
that God keeps repeating himself?

Let us have faith! Let us speak with decision! Self-irony is the
beginning of baseness. It is by speaking with decision that we become
good, that we become great. Yes, the enfranchisement of intellects, and
the consequent enfranchisement of nations, this was the sublime task
that the nineteenth century was performing in conjunction with France;
for the twofold