We need not, if we learn the lessons of the
past aright, fear greatly to confront the future. Not to us the glory
or the praise, but to a merciful overruling Providence, ever raising
up amongst us noble hearts in time, that we are found to-day
"A nation yet, the rulers and the ruled,"
not quite bankrupt in heart or hope or faith, but possessing
"Some sense of duty, something of a faith,
Some reverence for the laws ourselves have made,
Some patient force to change them when we will;"
and we may justly acknowledge, in thankfulness not vainglorious, the
happier fate that has been ours above many another land, that may
still be ours, "if England to itself do rest but true."
We have seen during these sixty years the map of Europe remodelled to
an undreamed of extent. Fair Italy, though still possessing her fatal
gift of beauty, though still suffering many things, is no longer the
prey of foreign unloved rulers, but has become a nation, a mere
"geographical expression" no longer; Germany, whose many little
princedoms were once a favourite theme of British mockery, is now one
great and formidable empire; the power of Russia has, despite the
Crimean check, continued to expand, while desperate internal
struggles have shaken that half-developed people, proving fatal to
the gentle successor of Nicholas, the emancipator of the Russian
serfs, and often threatening the life of _his_ successors; and the
once formidable American slave-system has been swept away, with
appalling loss of human life; a second President of the United States
has fallen by the hand of an assassin; and new difficulties, scarce
inferior to those connected with slavery, have followed on its
abolition.
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