98 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 



lo! in tlie midst of these nations of slaves, one of 

 those petty States on which men had looked down Avith 

 scorn, and in this petty State a little hamlet, hidden 

 among the hills of Palerstine, that had never heard of 

 the splendors of the great principalities of Asia ! In the 

 home of her fathers, in sackcloth and ashes, a young 

 widow was mourning her husband, and praying to her 

 God. Judith rises in the name of her imperilled coun- 

 try. Armed with her chaste beauty and her God-given 

 courage, she goes alone into the barbarian camp, and 

 returns not till she brings in her woman's hands — I had 

 almost said, her virgin hands — the tyrant's head, drip- 

 ping with blood. 



All honor to little Judea! What pity, if it had be- 

 come a province of that Assyrian empire with which it 

 was related by so many ties of origin and speech ! With- 

 out Judea, we should be neither Frenchmen nor Chris- 

 tians, but only a fraction of the immense agglomeration 

 of nations that made up the Roman empire. 



All honor to the little States ! They were consti- 

 tuted by the hand of God, and I hope in him that he 

 will not suffer them to be destroyed. His providence 

 presides in history, and has placed them between the 

 great States as the negation of universal empire, the 

 pacific obstacle to the shocks of their power, the plots 

 of their ambition. 



The little States ! They are the representatives of 

 right in its most affecting form — right unarmed and 

 defenceless. 



The little States! They are the radiating centres of 

 the most splendid civilization, from ilie cities of ancient 

 Greece, that gave us an ^schylus and a Sophocles, an 

 A.ristides and a Plato, down to those ]V})ublics of mod- 

 ern Italy to whicli wo owe the Revival of licarning. 



