Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 7.djvu/299

 CASTELAR must have the poetry and the traditions of monarchy. I said this because I know that, altho the Assembly, and the official authorities can make laws, they can not decree ideas or sentiments, those real and solid foundations of institutions. Formerly, in other times, kings were representative of the national dignity, and now from those same benches we have heard that they sold their native soil to a foreigner and even prostrated themselves at his feet, the people in the meantime answering the enemy With the 2d of May and the siege of Saragossa.

Formerly art sketched the apotheosis of Charles V. with Titian's brush, or the ladies-in-waiting of Philip VI. with the brush of Velasquez. Now it sketches the image of the communists of Paris, of the victims of Charles V., or the ship in which the Puritans took the soul of a republic to the bosom of virgin America. Formerly, the gala days of the people were the birthdays of kings and the anniversaries of the beginning of their reigns. Now, the great days of celebration are the 10th of August, the 30th of July, the 24th of February, and the 29th of September—days which mark the expulsion of kings. Formerly, when a navigator landed in America, or an explorer went into the interior of a new country, the purest piece of gold, the largest pearl, the clearest diamond was reserved for the king. Now, your minister of the treasury claims from the king even the clasp which holds the royal mantle about his shoulders.