The Irish Monthly (Volume 9)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1881 Excerpt: ... BRACTON; OR, SUB SIGILLO. A TALE OF 1812. BY REV. W. H. ANDERDON, 8.J. CHAPTER XXXVI. HORRLDA BELLA. The autumn of 1812 witnessed the proud anticipations and the most disastrous reverse of that extraordinary man who had seemed for years to hold the balance of Europe. Hitherto, it might be said that Napoleon had been successfully opposed by one power alone. A couple of islands, of no great extent, the nearest lying within sight of his own shores, had gained, chiefly by that insular position, a naval supremacy which effectually checked his efforts and those of his allies by sea, while it promised to secure English and Irish homes from the direct invasion on which his thoughts were bent. More than two hundred years before, the greatest dramatist, perhaps, of the world, had sung in immortal strains these natural advantages of his native soil. The words have become trite, like all great words; but who would not willingly have the noble verse recalled to him again? This fortress, built by nature for herself Against infection and the hand of war; This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone, set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall, Or as a moat defensive to a house Against the envy of less happier lands, t Besides those sons of the Norseman and the Teuton, however, with their skill in ships, there was another power against which Napoleon was now to hurl his military resources. The autocrat of the North, with a hold over his swarming millions that was not imperial only, but patriarchal and religious, impended as a threatening avalanche So Wordsworth sang, in lines that might be described as more than patriotic, and approaching even to the ultra-national, had it not been that France was then the representative of infideli...