420 



ON THE LEADING PASSIONS 



<j In all, save form alone, how changed !— and who, 

 That marks the fire still sparkling in each eye, 

 Who but would deem their bosom burn'd anew 

 With thy unquenched beam, lost Liberty ! 

 And many dream withal the hour is nigh, 

 That gives them back their fathers' heritage ; 

 For foreign arms and aid they fondly sigh, 

 Nor solely dare encounter hostile rage. 

 Of tear their name defiled from Slavery's mournful page. 



Hereditary bondsmen! know ye not. 



Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow? 



By their right arms the conquest must be wrought? 



Will Gaul or Muscovite redress ye 1 No! 



True, they may lay your proud despoilers low. 



But not for you will Freedom's altars flame.- 



" . Shades of the Helots ! triumph o'er your foe ! 



Greece! change thy lords, thy state is slill the same ; 

 Thy glorious day is o'er, but not thy years of shame. 



Yet are thy skies as blue, thy crags as wild ; 

 Sweet are thy groves, and verdant are thy fields i 

 Thine olive ripe as when Minerva smiled. 

 And still his honeyed wealth Hymettus yields ; 

 There the blithe bee his fragrant fortress builds, 

 The free-born wanderer of thy mountain air : 

 A polio still thy long, long summer gilds ; 

 Still in his beam Mendeli's marbles glare; 

 An, Glory, Freedom, fails, but Nature still is fair.* 



A thousand other examples of like effect, from like causes, might easily be 

 adduced. Insomuch, that it has become a general maxim among political 

 writers, that nations, like individuals, have a natural youth, perfection, and 

 dissolution. It is a maxim, however, that must be received with some degree 

 of caution. The experiment, notwithstanding that the world has now continued 

 for nearly six thousand years, has never been tried in its hardier and colder 

 regions ; and we have already seen, that in the warmer climates, there is a 

 cause operating towards the production of national decay, peculiar to itself, 

 and distinct, therefore, from the law of general necessity. Yet, even in the 

 warmer regions of the earth, the fact does not hold universally; for the 

 Chinese have historic documents of the continuance of their empire for nearly 

 four thousand years : one of the cnief of which is, the famous record of an 

 eclipse of the sun in the reign of Ching-Kang, 2155 years before the com- 

 mencement of the Christian era; while Persia, though conquered by the 

 Romans, and shorn of more than half its extent in elder times, has still, under 

 some form or another, descended to the present day, through a period of 

 nearly three thousand years. And, wild and wandering as is the life of the 

 Arab tribes, they may at least make a boast of having uniformly retained 

 their customs, their liberty, and their language, for a longer period than any 

 other people, and amid all the changes that have befallen the most splendid 

 empires around them ; and are at this day, in habits, government, and national 

 tongue, nearly the same as they were in the time of the patriarch Job ; and 

 probably as they were long before the earliest epoch to which the Chinese 

 can make any pretensions. 



There can be no doubt, however, that the very perfection of a people, in 

 the arts of civilization and refinement, has a natural tendency to produce the 

 seeds of future decay and dissolution ; and, although the Chinese and Ara- 

 bians have not hitherto given proofs of any such change, it is only, perhaps, 

 because they have for ages continued stationary, and have never reached the 

 absolute perfection we are speaking of. I shall close the present lecture, 

 therefore, with pointing out a few of those passions and other affections 

 which immediately spring from what may be called the manhood or sum- 

 mit of civilization, are chiefly distinctive of it, and pave the way for its 

 downfall. 



In order, however, to give strength and bearing to the picture, let us first 

 glance at the passions and emotions of mankind, in a simpler state ; in that 



* Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, canto iL 



