Page:Hazlitt, Political Essays (1819).djvu/135

 "Did not the Angels who announced thy birth, Proclaim it with the sound of Peace on Earth?'"

From the length of time that this prediction has remained unfulfilled, Mr. Southey thinks its accomplishment must be near. His Odes will not hasten the event.

Again, we do not understand the use which Mr. Southey makes of the Red Cross in this poem. For speaking of himself he says,

"And when that last and most momentous hour Beheld the re-risen cause of evil yield To the Red Cross and England's arm of power, I sung of Waterloo's unrivalled field, Paying the tribute of a soul embued With deepest joy, devout and awful gratitude."

This passage occurs in the Proem. In the Dream the Angel of the English Church is made to warn the Princess—

"Think not that lapse of ages shall abate The inveterate malice of that Harlot old; Fallen tho' thou deemest her from her high estate, She proffers still the envenomed cup of gold, And her fierce Beast, whose names are blasphemy, The same that was, is still, and still must be."

It is extraordinary that both these passages relate to one and the same thing, namely, Popery, which our author in the first identifies with the Christian religion, thus invoking to his aid every pure feeling or pious prejudice in the minds of his readers, and in the last denounces as that Harlot old, "whose names are blasphemy," with all the fury of plenary inspiration. This is a great effort of want of logic. Mr. Southey will hardly sing or say that it was to establish Protestantism in France that England's arm of power was extended on this occasion. Nor was it simply to establish Popery. That existed there already. It was to establish "the inveterate malice of that Harlot old," her "envenomed cup," to give her back her daggers and her fires, her mummeries, her holy oil, her power over the bodies and the minds of men,