the concentration of all the vigour and life of genius into a single
and strong government, the graces, the arts, the letters of a polished
court, the freedom, the energy, the resources of a commercial
population destined to rise above the tyranny at which it had first
connived, and give to the emancipated Saxon the markets of the world.
Upon the victory of that day all these contending interests, this vast
alternative in the future, swayed and trembled. Out, then, upon that
vulgar craving of those who comprehend neither the vast truths of life
nor the grandeur of ideal art, and who ask from poet or narrator the
poor and petty morality of "Poetical Justice,"--a justice existing not
in our work-day world; a justice existing not in the sombre page of
history; a justice existing not in the loftier conceptions of men
whose genius has grappled with the enigmas which art and poetry only
can foreshadow and divine,--unknown to us in the street and the
market, unknown to us on the scaffold of the patriot or amidst the
flames of the martyr, unknown to us in the Lear and the Hamlet, in the
Agamemnon and the Prometheus. Millions upon millions, ages upon ages,
are entered but as items in the vast account in which the recording
angel sums up the unerring justice of God to man.

Raw, cold, and dismal dawned the morning of the fourteenth of April.
And on that very day Margaret and her son, and the wife and daughter
of Lord Warwick, landed, at last, on the shores of England. [Margaret
landed at Weymouth; Lady Warwick, at Portsmouth.] Come they for joy
or for woe, for victory or despair? The issue of this day's fight on
the heath of Gladsmoor will decide. Prank thy halls, O Westminster,
for the triumph of the Lancastrian king,--or open thou, O Grave, to
receive the saint-like Henry and his noble son. The king-maker goes
before ye, saint-like father and noble son, to prepare your thrones
amongst the living or your mansions amongst the dead!