We do not live by bread alone, and British occupation does not give
to the heart all the things for which it craves. Blessings may even
become curses when the gigantic power that bestows them on us scares
from our midst the shy spirits of Beauty and of Poesy. Nor is it solely
because it appeals to the poetic feelings in us that this country
endears itself to my heart. It is the perfect republic: the sense of
emancipation experienced in it by the wanderer from the Old World is
indescribably sweet and novel. Even in our ultra-civilised condition
at home we do periodically escape back to nature; and, breathing the
fresh mountain air and gazing over vast expanses of ocean and land,
we find that she is still very much to us. It is something more than
these bodily sensations we experience when first mingling with our
fellow-creatures, where all men are absolutely free and equal as here.
I fancy I hear some wise person exclaiming, "No, no, no! In name only
is your Purple Land a republic; its constitution is a piece of waste
paper, its government an oligarchy tempered by assassination and
revolution." True; but the knot of ambitious rulers all striving to
pluck each other down have no power to make the people miserable.
Theunwritten constitution, mightier than the written one, is in the heart
of every man to make him still a republican and free with a freedom
it would be hard to match anywhere else on the globe.
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