change be seen. Old kingdoms may be on the wane; but new dynasties
advance. Though revolutions rise to high spring-tide, monarchs will
still drown hard;--monarchs survived the flood!"

"Are all our dreams, then, vain?" sighed Yoomy. "Is this no dawn of
day that streaks the crimson East! Naught but the false and flickering
lights which sometimes mock Aurora in the north! Ah, man, my brother!
have all martyrs for thee bled in vain; in vain we poets sang, and
prophets spoken? Nay, nay; great Mardi, helmed and mailed, strikes at
Oppression's shield, and challenges to battle! Oro will defend the
right, and royal crests must roll."

"Thus, Yoomy, ages since, you mortal poets sang; but the world may not
be moved from out the orbit in which first it rolled. On the map that
charts the spheres, Mardi is marked 'the world of kings.' Round
centuries on centuries have wheeled by:--has all this been its
nonage? Now, when the rocks grow gray, does man first sprout his
beard? Or, is your golden time, your equinoctial year, at hand, that
your race fast presses toward perfection; and every hand grasps at a
scepter, that kings may be no more?"

"But free Vivenza! Is she not the star, that must, ere long, lead up
the constellations, though now unrisen? No kings are in Vivenza; yet,
spite her thralls, in that land seems more of good than elsewhere. Our
hopes are not wild dreams: Vivenza cheers our hearts. She is a rainbow
to the isles!"

"Ay, truth it is, that in Vivenza they have prospered. But thence it
comes not, that all men may be as they. Are all men of one heart and
brain; one bone and sinew? Are all nations sprung of Dominora's loins?