For evil is the chronic malady of the universe; and checked in one place, breaks forth in another.
"Of late, on this head, some wild dreams have departed.
"There are many, who erewhile believed that the age of pikes and javelins was passed; that after a heady and blustering youth, old Mardi was at last settling down into a serene old age; and that the Indian summer, first discovered in your land, sovereign kings! was the hazy vapor emitted from its tranquil pipe.

But it has not so proved.
Mardi's peaces are but truces.

Long absent, at last the red comets have returned.

And return they must, though their periods be ages.

And should Mardi endure till mountain melt into mountain, and all the isles form one table-land; yet, would it but expand the old battle-plain.
"Students of history are horror-struck at the massacres of old; but in the shambles, men are being murdered to-day.