I have shewn by what process these united powers sublimated the objects of outward sense in such rites--practices--and ordinances of Religion--as deviate from simplicity and wholesome piety; how they converted them to instruments of nobler use; and raised them to a conformity with things truly divine.

The same reasoning might have been carried into the customs of civil life and their accompanying imagery, wherever these also were inconsistent with the dignity of man; and like effects of exaltation and purification have been shewn.
But a more urgent service calls me to point to further works of these united powers, more obvious and obtrusive--works and appearances, such as were hailed by the citizen of Seville when returning from Madrid;--'where' (to use the words of his own public declaration) 'he had left his countrymen groaning in the chains which perfidy had thrown round them, and doomed at every step to the insult of being eyed with the disdain of the conqueror to the conquered; from Madrid threatened, harrassed, and vexed; where mistrust reigned in every heart, and the smallest noise made the citizens tremble in the bosom of their families; where the enemy, from time to time, ran to arms to sustain the impression of terror by which the inhabitants had been stricken through the recent massacre; from Madrid a prison, where the gaolers took pleasure in terrifying the prisoners by alarms to keep them quiet; from Madrid thus tortured and troubled by a relentless Tyrant, to fit it for the slow and interminable evils of Slavery;'-- when he returned, and was able to compare the oppressed and degraded state of the inhabitants of that metropolis with the noble attitude of defence in which Andalusia stood.

'A month ago,' says he, 'the Spaniards had lost their country;--Seville has restored it to life more glorious than ever; and those fields, which for so many years have seen no steel but that of the plough-share, are going amid the splendour of arms to prove the new cradle of their adored country.'-- 'I could not,' he adds, 'refrain from tears of joy on viewing the city in which I first drew breath--and to see it in a situation so glorious!' We might have trusted, but for late disgraces, that there is not a man in these islands whose heart would not, at such a spectacle, have beat in sympathy with that of this fervent Patriot--whose voice would not be in true accord with his in the prayer (which, if he has not already perished for the service of his dear country, he is perhaps uttering at this moment) that Andalusia and the city of Seville may preserve the noble attitude in which they then stood, and are yet standing; or, if they be doomed to fall, that their dying efforts may not be unworthy of their first promises; that the evening--the closing hour of their freedom may display a brightness not less splendid, though more aweful, than the dawn; so that the names of Seville and Andalusia may be consecrated among men, and be words of life to endless generations.
Saragossa!--She also has given bond, by her past actions, that she cannot forget her duty and will not shrink from it.[20] [20] Written in February.
Valencia is under the seal of the same obligation.

The multitudes of men who were arrayed in the fields of Baylen, and upon the mountains of the North; the peasants of Asturias, and the students of Salamanca; and many a solitary and untold-of hand, which, quitting for a moment the plough or the spade, has discharged a more pressing debt to the country by levelling with the dust at least one insolent and murderous Invader;--these have attested the efficacy of the passions which we have been contemplating--that the will of good men is not a vain impulse, heroic desires a delusive prop;--have proved that the condition of human affairs is not so forlorn and desperate, but that there are golden opportunities when the dictates of justice may be unrelentingly enforced, and the beauty of the inner mind substantiated in the outward act;--for a visible standard to look back upon; for a point of realized excellence at which to aspire; a monument to record;--for a charter to fasten down; and, as far as it is possible, to preserve.
Yes! there was an annunciation which the good received with gladness; a bright appearance which emboldened the wise to say--We trust that Regeneration is at hand; these are works of recovered innocence and wisdom: Magnus ab integro seclorum nascitur ordo; _Jam_ redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna; _Jam_ nova progenies coelo demittitur alto.
The spirits of the generous, of the brave, of the meditative, of the youthful and undefiled--who, upon the strongest wing of human nature, have accompanied me in this journey into a fair region--must descend: and, sorrowful to think! it is at the name and remembrance of Britain that we are to stoop from the balmy air of this pure element.

Our country did not create, but there was created for her, one of those golden opportunities over which we have been rejoicing: an invitation was offered--a summons sent to her ear, as if from heaven, to go forth also and exhibit on her part, in entire coincidence and perfect harmony, the beneficent action with the benevolent will; to advance in the career of renovation upon which the Spaniards had so gloriously entered; and to solemnize yet another marriage between Victory and Justice.