Great
Britain was in the midst of that bloodless revolution which, two years
afterwards, culminated in the passage of the Reform Bill, and thus
prepared the joyous and generous state of the British heart which
dictated the West India Emancipation Act. France was rejoicing in the
not bloodless _trois jours de Juliet_. Indeed, the whole world seemed
stirred up with a universal excitement, which, when contrasted with
the universal panics of 1837 and 1857, leads one to regard as more
than a philosophical speculation the doctrine of those who hold the
life of mankind from the creation as but one life, beating with one
heart, animated with one soul, tending to one destiny, although made
up of millions upon millions of molecular lives, gifted with their
infinite variety of attractions and repulsions, which regulate or
crystallize them into evanescent substructures or organizations, which
we call nationalities and empires and peoples and tribes, whose minute
actions and reactions on each other are the histories which absorb our
attention, whilst the grand universal life moves on beyond our ken,
or only guessed at, as the astronomers shadow out movements of our
solar system around or towards some distant unknown centre of
attraction.
If the times of 1830 were eventful, there were among our people, as
well as among other peoples, men equal to the occasion.
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