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 anarchy. In a case of this pressing danger, this mortal peril, it is not every man who would have put himself forward at such risk to protect against a force so formidable the threatened safety of society; not even the native land of these lion-hearted men can hope always to reproduce a breed of patriots ready to incur such hazards and undertake such feats as this in the sacred cause of their country. France has her Bayards and her Dantons, England her Sidneys and her Nelsons; these are but common heroes, fit only to be classed with the heroes and patriots of old time, and such as their native soil might haply rear again at need; but the most ardent and sanguine lover of his country in all Belgium can hardly hope that his fatherland will ever again bring forth a race of men worthy to be called the seed of such fathers as these; men capable of exploits unexampled in the annals of vulgar patriotism, and from which the bravest of those above cited would assuredly have drawn back. It is hard to imagine those heroes of other countries inspired with the courage requisite to make war upon such enemies and under such conditions as could not suffice to daunt or divert from their purpose the heroes of Brussels.

Thus, as once before from Jersey, was Victor Hugo now driven from Belgium by a government which in the year of general shame contrived to attain the supreme crown of disgrace, to gather the final flower of ignominy; a distinction not easy to win from so many rivals in the infamous race; but theft and murder, under their magnified and multiplied forms of national robbery and civic massacre, are too common among a certain sort of