Mary Platt Parmele

“ The same sun which rose upon temples and palaces and life serene and beautiful in Greece, an hour later lighted sacrificial altars and hideous orgies in the forests of Gaul. While the Gaul was nailing the heads of human victims to his door, or hanging them from the bridle of his horse, or burning or flogging his prisoners to death, the Greek, with a literature, an art, and a civilization in ripest perfection, discussed with his friends the deepest problems of life and destiny, which were then baffling human intelligence, even as they are with us to-day. ”

“ On the surface is absolutism in glittering completeness, and beneath that—chaos. Lying at the bottom of that chaos is the great mass of Slavonic people undeveloped as children—an embryonic civilization—utterly helpless and utterly miserable. In the mass lying above that exists the mind of Russia—through which course streams of unduly developed intelligence in fierce revolt against the omnipresence of misery. And still above that is the shining, enameled surface rivaling that of any other nation in splendor. ”

“ Whatever capacity Germany had for being, was in those neglected fragments. If she ever developed into greatness it must be along the line of their elemental tendencies, and by being German, not French.
So a nation, helpless, broken, disorganized, out of harmony with itself and with others, could not act, but it could think. And in this time of chaos and confusion there commenced mighty stirrings in the thought of Germany. Slumbering in that chaos were the germs of wonderful music and a wondrous literature. ”

“ He allowed no religion, no class, to sway or to hold him. He was for France; and her greatness and glory augmented under his ruthless dominion. By his extraordinary genius he made the reign of a commonplace king one of dazzling splendor; and while gratifying his own colossal ambition, he so strengthened the foundations of the monarchy that princes of the blood themselves could not shake it.
It was great, it was dazzling, but of all his work there is but one thing which revolutions and time have not swept away: the "French Academy" alone survives as his monument. ”

“ The continent of Europe was actually under his feet. History had only twice before witnessed such a display of power, and contained only three men as colossal in triumphs—Alexander, Julius Cæsar, and Charlemagne.
But it was the mantle of these last two that he felt he was destined to wear, the glittering pinnacles of the great Roman Empire being ever before his romantic ambition. Hence, when the longed-for son was born he called him King of Rome. And why should he not? Was not his mother daughter of a line of emperors leading back to Charlemagne, first emperor of the Holy Roman Empire? ”

“ If the mind could be carried back on the track of time, and we could see what we now call France as it existed twenty centuries before the Christian era, we should behold the same natural features: the same mountains rearing their heads; the same rivers flowing to the sea; the same plains stretching out in the sunlight. But instead of vines and flowers and cultivated fields we should behold great herds of wild ox and elk, and of swine as fierce as wolves, ranging in a climate as cold as Norway ”

“ How should the Empress of Austria, born, nurtured, and fed in the very center of despotism—not hearing or heeding the current ideas about human rights and freedom—entirely misunderstanding the past, the present, and the future—how should she suspect the terrific forces which were accumulating beneath the throne of France, or that it would become a scaffold for her child? Hapsburg and Bourbon, to her mind, were realities as fixed and enduring as the Alps. ”

“ No family in Europe ever grasped at power more unscrupulously than the Guises in France. They were cruel and remorseless in its pursuit. It was the warm southern blood of her mother which was Mary Stuart's ruin. She was a Guise,—and so was her son James I.—and so was Charles I., her grandson. There was despotism and tyranny in their blood. Their very natures made it impossible that they should comprehend the Anglo- Saxon ideal of civil liberty.
Who can tell what might have been the course of History, if England had been ruled by English Kings, which it has not been since the Conquest. ”

“ The topography of a country is to some extent a prophecy of its future. Had there been no Mississippi coursing for three thousand miles through the North American Continent, no Ohio and Missouri bisecting it from east to west, no great inland seas indenting and watering it, no fertile prairies stretching across its vast areas, how different would have been the history of our own land.
Russia is the strange product of strange physical conditions. Nature was not in impetuous mood when she created this greater half of Europe, nor was she generous, except in the matter of space. ”

“ In shops and barns, as well as in clubs and drawing-rooms, there was a glimmering of the coming day.
"What is true upon one continent is true upon another," say they. "If it is cowardly to submit to tyranny in America, what is it in France?" " If Englishmen may revolt against oppression, why may not Frenchmen?" "No government without the consent of the governed, eh? When has our consent been asked, the consent of twenty-five million people? Are we sheep, that we have let a few thousands govern us for a thousand years, without our consent?" ”

“ Cattle exterminated, food exhausted, the uncultivated fields drenched with blood and tears—a vast graveyard, in which were the mouldering corpses of eight million slaughtered people, one-third of the population of the empire! Earth was kneaded into bread; men found dead with their mouths filled with grass; and there are frightful stories of human beings hunted down, like deer, for food.
The spirit of the people was broken. Germany had been set back two hundred years. ”

“ Among the German tribes it was the Goths who had first come under the civilizing influence of the Christian religion.
As some winged seed is wafted from a fair garden into a dark, distant forest, and there takes root and blossoms, so was the seed-germ of Christianity caught by the wind of destiny, and carried from Palestine to the heart of pagan Germany, where, strange to say, it found congenial soil. ”

“ Men were not being nailed by the ears to the pillory, nor mutilated and branded, for resisting his will. But the spectacle was for that reason all the more astonishing: a great nation, full of rage, hate and bitterness, but silent and submissive under the spell of one dominating personality.
He had no experience in diplomatic usages, no skilled ministers to counsel and warn, but by his foreign policy he made himself the terror of Europe; Spain, France, and the United Provinces courting his friendship, while Protestantism had protection at home and abroad. ”

“ Nicholas had failed in all his calculations. In vain had he tried to lure England into a secret compact by the offer of Egypt—in vain had he preserved Hungary to Austria—in vain sought to attach Prussia to himself by acts of friendship; and his Nemesis was pursuing him, avenging a long series of affronts to France. Unsupported by a single nation, he was at war with three; and after a brilliant reign of twenty-eight years unchecked by a single misfortune, he was about to die, leaving to his empire the legacy of a disastrous war, which was to end in defeat and humiliation. ”

“ Was not the Emperor himself a living illustration of what a man from the people might become? And then what did it mean to Frenchmen to be suddenly lifted to dazzling ascendancy in Europe? Who would not willingly serve a master who could bring Hapsburg, Hohenzollern, Romanoff, Bourbon, crouching at his feet—who could tear down states, and set them up, and if an extra throne were needed for a retainer, could carve a new state from territory of friend and foe alike, and place a diadem upon every head in his domestic or military household? ”

“ Hereafter there was another hunger to be appeased besides that for food and land; a hunger for conquest, for vengeance, and for glory for the Gallic name. National pride was born.
For years they hovered like wolves about Rome. But skill and superior intelligence tell in the centuries. It took long—and cost no end of blood and treasure; but two hundred years from the capture of Rome, the Gauls were driven out of Italy, and the Alps pronounced a barrier set by nature herself against barbarian encroachments. ”