When will the end be?

Torrijos is described as a man of excellent discernment: who knows how
long he had repressed the unreasonable schemes of his followers, and
turned a deaf ear to the temptings of fallacious hope? But there comes
at length a sum-total of oppressive burdens which is intolerable, which
tempts the wisest towards fallacies for relief. These weary groups,
pacing the Euston-Square pavements, had often said in their despair,
"Were not death in battle better? Here are we slowly mouldering into
nothingness; there we might reach it rapidly, in flaming splendor.
Flame, either of victory to Spain and us, or of a patriot death, the
sure harbinger of victory to Spain. Flame fit to kindle a fire which no
Ferdinand, with all his Inquisitions and Charles Tenths, could put
out." Enough, in the end of 1829, Torrijos himself had yielded to this
pressure; and hoping against hope, persuaded himself that if he could
but land in the South of Spain with a small patriot band well armed
and well resolved, a band carrying fire in its heart,--then Spain, all
inflammable as touchwood, and groaning indignantly under its brutal
tyrant, might blaze wholly into flame round him, and incalculable
victory be won. Such was his conclusion; not sudden, yet surely not
deliberate either,--desperate rather, and forced on by circumstances.
He thought with himself that, considering Somers Town and considering
Spain, the terrible chance was worth trying; that this big game of Fate,
go how it might, was one which the omens credibly declared he and these
poor Spaniards ought to play.

His whole industries and energies were thereupon bent towards starting
the said game; and his thought and continual speech and song now was,
That if he had a few thousand pounds to buy arms, to freight a ship and
make the other preparations, he and these poor gentlemen, and Spain and
the world, were made men and a saved Spain and world. What talks and
consultations in the apartment in Regent Street, during those winter
days of 1829-30; setting into open conflagration the young democracy
that was wont to assemble there! Of which there is now left next to
no remembrance. For Sterling never spoke a word of this affair in
after-days, nor was any of the actors much tempted to speak. We can
understand too well that here were young fervid hearts in an explosive
condition; young rash heads, sanctioned by a man's experienced head.
Here at last shall enthusiasm and theory b