the two most powerful and exasperated
nations of the earth.

It is no superstition to trace those events to a higher source than man.
The conclusion of this vast conflict was already written, in a record
above the short-sighted vision and infirm memory of our nature. In all the
earlier guilt of Europe, France has been the allotted punisher of the
Continent; and England the allotted punisher of France. I make no
presumptuous attempt to explain the reason; but the process is
incontestable. When private profligacy combines with some atrocious act of
public vice to make the crimes of the Continent intolerable, France is
sent forth to carry fire and sword to its boundaries, to crush its armies
in the field, to sack its cities, and to decimate its population. Then
comes the penalty of the punisher. The crimes of France demand purgation.
The strength of England is summoned to this stern duty, and France is
scourged; her military pride is broken; her power is paralysed, peace
follows, and Europe rests for a generation. The process has been so often
renewed, and has been completed with such irresistible regularity, that
the principle is a law. The period for this consummation was now come once
more.

I was sitting in my library one evening, when a stranger was introduced,
who had brought a letter from the officer commanding our squadron on the
Spanish coast. He was a man of noble presence, of stately stature, and
with a countenance exhibiting all the vivid expression of the South. He
was a Spanish nobleman from the Asturias, and deputed by the authorities
to demand succours in the national rising against the common enemy,
Napoleon. I was instinctively struck by the measureless value of
resistance in a country which opened to us the whole flank of France; but
the intelligence was so wholly unexpected, so entirely beyond calculation,
and at the same time so pregnant with the highest results to England, that
I was long incredulous. I was prepared to doubt the involuntary
exaggeration of men who had every thing at stake; the feverish tone of
minds embarked in the most formidable of all struggles; and even the
passion of the southern in every event and object, of force sufficient to
arouse him into action. But the Asturian was firm in his assurances, clear
and consistent in his views, and there was even a candour in his
confession of the unprepared state of his country, which added largely to
my confidence. Our dialogue was, I belie